


The Long Road to Patagonia

by Scruggzi



Series: The Thrilling Adventures of Doctor Space Phrack [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Female Doctor (Doctor Who), Post Cannon/AU Doctor, Post-Canon, Space Phrack, Space Shenanigans, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-18 12:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scruggzi/pseuds/Scruggzi
Summary: On the way to England, Phryne and her father disappear after a close encounter with an unfamiliar face in a very familiar police box. Back in Melbourne, Phryne's friends attempt to investigate her disappearance, but somehow, none of the evidence seems to make any sense at all.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fire_Sign](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/gifts).



> Lot's of thanks to all the Slack writers who encouraged me to finish this insanely long fic, especially Fire_Sign who is responsible for the presence of punctuation and just generally making the whole thing much better. Cheers.
> 
> For Miss Fisher Fans who don't watch Doctor Who:
> 
> The Doctor is a Time Lord (read - space wizard) from the planet Gallifrey who travels through time and space in a 1960s police telephone box called the TARDIS. He spends his time having adventures and saving the day, usually with a few human chums around to help out. When he gets close to death he can regenerate, completely changing his physical appearance. Whilst it is canonically established that the Doctor can look like anything, he is mysteriously always played by white men. In the spirit of MFMM, I wanted to mess with this deficiency and add a bit of space phrack.
> 
> (NEW DEVELOPMENT AS OF JULY 2017: The BBC have announced that we will in fact be getting a female Doctor as of Christmas this year. I am trying not to be outrageously excited by this and failing. This story can now be considered AU and the version of the Doctor I have written here is not the same as the one which will be played by Jodie Whittaker as I began writing this in January 2017 long before I knew this would be a thing.) 
> 
> This is an MFMM story with added space shenanigans and shouldn't be too hard to follow even if you don't watch the show.
> 
> For Doctor Who Fans who haven't watched Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries:
> 
> Phryne (read -Fry-uh-nee) Fisher is a private detective in late 1920s Melbourne. She's an unstoppable bad-arse who scales buildings, fights bad guys and solves increasingly improbable murders in fabulous hats with the help of an awesome found family of misfits and renegades. She always supports other women, unapologetically sleeps with whoever she damn well pleases, and delights in thumbing her nose at authority with a salacious smile and cheekbones I would kill for.
> 
> The show also comes with a tortuously slow burn romance between her and her not-actually-that-reluctant partner in crime solving, Detective Inspector Jack 'grumpy-pants-Mc-sexy-face' Robinson. It is conducted primarily via sassy banter and suggestive Shakespeare quotations. Also they eyebang like fucking champions and it is glorious.
> 
> I have no idea if this fic will make any sense if you've not watched MFMM but it's on Netflix and you totally should.
> 
>  

The Doctor danced into the TARDIS, coattails of his immaculate tuxedo flapping behind him, and tossed a small golden sphere from hand to hand, catching it deftly and popping it into a groove in the console where it glowed briefly before vanishing. The light crackled and shimmered outwards for a second as he patted his ship affectionately.

“There you go dear; don’t tell me I never bring you anything.”

He pulled down a view screen, grinning at his reflection on its surface. This face was dark, handsome, with deep obsidian eyes and a dazzling triangular smile which could light up a room like the birth of a sun.

“Now where have those bloody Sycorax got to?” His voice switched briefly from its customary English with a faint Brixton twang, to a cartoonish Texan drawl and back again. “ _I’m gonna go-a bounty hunting._ This calls for a hat. I look good in hats, I give them gravitas!”

He turned to the view screen, wondering idly where he had left his Stetson. It blinked on, showing the kaleidoscopic tunnel of the time vortex with the Sycorax vessel charging through it. An incomprehensible stream of symbols flowed up the side of the screen faster than a human eye could have followed them. The Doctor froze and the smile faded from his face in an instant.

“Oh no. Oh no no no, not there. Why does no-one ever obey Rule 17? Do not give time technology to _IDIOTS_!” He shouted at the screen, which beeped and flashed a white light briefly on an off as if in response. He glared, waggling a finger. “Don’t you start!”

He continued talking aloud to himself (or possibly to the TARDIS, it was hard to tell) in an aggrieved undertone whilst frantically pulling levers and pressing buttons. The screen was flashing a single string of circular symbols in the Gallifrayan alphabet which, had there been anyone around to translate for, would have read

_Warning. Temporal instability. Time fracture imminent._

“Of course, they couldn’t head out to Alpha Centuri or the Horsehead Nebula. It had to be Earth. And they couldn’t pick Medieval France, or somewhere nice and dull in the Cretaceous period, they had to head _there_.”

The ship was heading towards New York, 1938. He remembered that moment all too well, it was the year the Angels took Manhattan, when he had his last adventure with the Ponds. It was now a time so full of paradoxes and contradictions that even the TARDIS could not approach in safety. The Sycorax ship was already in trouble.

“That hotwired mess of a machine is going to rip time apart across this entire galaxy if they get within half a decade and worse than that, oh so much worse, they’ve got me _monologing_. I _hate_ monologing without an audience, it’s so boring when you’re on the receiving end! Besides it’s a cliché and a dangerous precedent. Next thing you know it’ll be maniacal laughter and ‘they said I was mad but I’ll show them’. Never. Bodes. Well.”

He pulled down three very large levers with a visible effort as he grunted out the last three words and patted the console apologetically.

“I’m sorry about this Old Girl, but we’re going to have to ram them!”

The TARDIS hit the Sycorax ship on the starboard wing causing it to veer off course, sparks and lights erupted from the console and wires and small explosions burst from the ceiling and walls. The Doctor was thrown back into a pool of luminescent fluid which was leaking out of a duct running down the wall. It caused scorch marks to appear on his shirt and trousers but he bounced up without paying them any attention and lurched across the floor as the room tipped and shook violently from side to side. Grabbing the view screen, he stared at the new readout which was overlaid in white across the image of the Sycorax ship, now cruising smoothly through blue skies. 1929, over the Timor Sea. He breathed out and closed his eyes in relief.

It was at that moment that he spotted the biplane. The Sycorax had already seen it and they were moving closer, with calm and deadly purpose.


	2. Into the Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As she begins her journey to England Phryne exchanges correspondence with Jack, but can't figure out how he is able to track her down so easily, despite the unexpected changes to her flight plan. She suspects her father might be able to shed some light on the mystery, if only the Baron could keep himself out of trouble for five minutes she might have time to get to the bottom of it.
> 
> This chapter is pure phrack fluff with a bit of bonus baron - ooh he's such a rascal!

As she flew away from the airfield, Phryne felt a lightness in her heart that went beyond the joy of flight. It felt as if a heavy weight she had not known she was carrying had been lifted off her chest. At the memory of their farewell, a kiss so full of promise, she smiled a wicked little smile to herself, savoring the taste that still lingered on her lips. She could feel Jack’s eyes watching her from far below, and threw him a jaunty wave over her shoulder. No more slow dancing; wherever and whenever it took place, their next meeting was going to be…interesting. She had dared him to come after her, she hoped very much that he would. In the meantime, the sky was calling her and above the clouds it was a glorious, iridescent blue.

The sound of the plane’s engine all but drowned out her father’s pointed shout of, “For Christ’s sake Phryne, don’t try to fly this thing one handed!”

Mindful that the air was indeed an unforgiving element, Phryne heeded his advice and tried to focus on the task in hand. It was no good getting upset in the air but it was also unwise to become unduly distracted whilst flying a biplane containing a petulant aristocrat - and Henry George Fisher, Baron of Richmond, was nothing if not petulant.

It was not until the plane had faded to a distant spec that the man she had left on the ground below returned to his motorcar and drove away. If you looked very closely, you could just make out that he was smiling; you would have to know him very well to see just how far down into his soul that smile went. The car moved slowly across the rough terrain as steady blue eyes scanned the horizon for any obstacles ahead which might need to be circumnavigated. No need to crash through like a freight train when, with a little care and a lot of patience, you could eventually find your way around them.

***

Their first landing was in Oodinatta, South Australia, a small town not too far shy of the Northern Territories. Phryne headed to the guest house with relief, announcing to her father that she was done for the day and intended to have a bath and food in her room. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts under warm, fragrant water and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with the Baron’s inevitable teasing about Jack. Whatever trouble her father got into he could either get himself out of it or she would deal with it in the morning.

Two hours after their arrival, Phryne was luxuriating in bed and just on the point of dozing off when a knock on the door announced the arrival of a telegram. It was from Jack. Impressive, as she hadn’t told him where to contact her, but the Inspector was very good at his job.

_Romantic overture appreciated STOP Regret Melbourne cannot cope without both of us STOP Care to improve on it QUERY_

Disappointed but not entirely surprised, she mentally awarded that one a begrudging 8/10 for the bravado and the compliment to her detective skills. His acknowledgement of her bald request to follow her halfway around the world on little more than a whim, was so sweetly and characteristically gallant, that her face broke into a smile which she suspected was nauseatingly sentimental. Thank God there were no witnesses. She also suspected that it was money as well as murder that prevented him jumping off this particular cliff with her, and she wasn’t going to begrudge him on either count. Her first impulse was to respond immediately with a telegram of her own, something along the lines of:

_Ask Hugh what became of my book STOP Check for artistic merit QUERY_

But she felt that was unfair to young Constable Collins. She doubted he had ever told anyone that she had lent him _Erotica of the Far East_ , (an illicit volume almost certainly in violation of the _Obscene and Indecent Publications Act_ ) under the guise of having him judge its legality. Hugh Collins was, at any rate, still on his honeymoon, and if the telegram precipitated a conversation with his boss that was so embarrassing the poor boy had an apoplexy on the spot, it was possible her friend Dot – now the newly minted Mrs Collins - would never forgive her.

Phryne however was serious about moving past the cautious flirtations which had been for so long the running theme of her and Jack’s partnership. She got up, obtained some stationary from her case and began to write him a letter.

_Dear Jack,_

_Your dedication to duty does you credit Inspector. I would expect nothing less. I asked you to come after me because, whilst there may be a whole world out there and I have every intention of flying off into it for a little while, there is no-one I would rather share this adventure with than you. It’s only the first day of this flight and I have already spent most of it regretting that I didn’t forcibly remove my father from the plane and give you his seat. Alas, I have my responsibilities too and it would have somewhat defeated the point of the trip! As soon as I deliver the wretched man into the hands of my mother I can head for home. You will just have to make do without my considerable talents for a while._

_I used to think that that love this strong was a trap, and no matter how exquisite the decoration, a gilded prison is still a cage. Or that you had to give up a part of yourself to be so close to another person. And whilst it made me happy to see the joy it brought to other people…well, you know me Jack, I will not give up any part of myself and I cannot be caged. You proved me wrong (enjoy that, I doubt it will happen again!). You showed me that love can be a partnership, a marvellous and beautiful kind of freedom. I am more grateful to you than I will ever be able to express. I wanted to give you something in return, to show you the thrill of jumping off a cliff without knowing how high it is just to feel the wind rushing around your ears. I wanted you to feel the joy of being reckless, it’s always worked for me._

_I do understand why you have to stay, neither one of us can change who we are and I would never ask it of you, but perhaps on my way home you could meet me halfway for a little adventure? Who knows what kind of trouble I might get into without you…_

_In the meantime, Jack, there’s more than one way to get to Patagonia…_

The rest of the letter was so indecent it almost made _Phryne_ blush. She addressed it to City South Police Station and rather hoped that he would open it at his desk whilst someone was watching, possibly when holding something breakable or attempting to drink tea. She decided that her next letter was going directly to his house, thus revealing to the Detective Inspector that she knew where it was – he had never told her himself, but what kind of detective would she be if she’d never found out?

She had signed off her letter hopefully:

_I’m sure Mr Butler furnished you with my full flight plan so you know where to contact me, I very much look forward to hearing from you. I’d be ever so touched to know I was in your thoughts as you are in mine. Assuming of course that I can decipher your near illegible handwriting!_

_With Love,_

_P x_

In the morning, Phryne discovered her father had gotten himself into a bar fight and she had to spend _six sodding hours_ , getting him discharged before they could take flight again, meaning that they had to change their travel plans and land early to avoid flying in the dark.

The town was a tiny rural hamlet in the Northern Territories called Harts Range and the dingy guest house was a long way below her usual standards for accommodation. It was a great and welcome surprise to have a telegram from Jack delivered to her room that very evening. Damn that man was good! How he had even received her letter so quickly was something of a mystery. She had asked the young woman behind the desk to post it urgently, perhaps Oodinatta had an airmail service, she hadn’t thought to ask. Phryne presumed a collusion with the Baron as this was the only logical explanation for Jack knowing her whereabouts, something she considered partial payback for her father’s unconscionable behaviour – especially as he vehemently denied interfering in her love life, which he declared to be no business of his - therefore sparing her from having to discuss it with him. He also retired early with a cognac and a nerve tonic, keeping himself away from the bar and out of trouble.

She read Jack’s telegram eagerly.

_Patagonia sounds inspiring STOP I love you STOP Letter to follow_

That sounded promising. He was literary man after all. With luck his prose would be more stimulating than his handwriting.

Once they reached Darwin, their third and final stop before open water, Phryne and her father had dinner together at their hotel which was, as it turned out, a much less harrowing experience than it might have been. This could be partly attributed to an improvement in their accommodations when compared to the previous night, but also to the Baron himself, who appeared unusually contrite and seemed to be, in his own way, making a genuine effort to bridge the gap between them. He surprised her firstly by apologising, seemingly sincerely, for the punch up at the bar. He claimed his drinking companion made an ‘ungentlemanly’ comment about her after seeing her in the lobby in her flight gear.

Although he declined to repeat whatever the man had said, Phryne assumed she had heard worse and assured the Baron that neither she, nor her honour, required defending, especially not by him, and certainly not if it cost them in travel time. Privately however, she was a little moved by his desire to stand up for her. It was misplaced and patronising for sure, but that was men for you - can’t live without them, can’t hit them with an axe. She had never considered that her father might care enough about her or her reputation to hit a man with a chair. After their last case, where he had voluntarily put himself in the path of a murderer to protect her and her household, she was beginning to think that she may have judged his character too harshly – entirely justifiably given his duplicitous and secretive behaviour. Of course, the Baron was still an utter arse most of the time but…perhaps a leopard could change its spots after all. One or two spots at least.

Over the pudding and after several of glasses of wine, the Baron upped himself in her estimation again. This time offering something better than misplaced machismo and hours of legal tedium.

“I am truly sorry Phryne. For all of it. And I am grateful for what you’re doing. I know I’m dragging you away from your friends and your work. I’m lucky to have you on my side. I know I don’t deserve it.”

He actually sounded remorseful. That made her think of Jack when her antics had gotten him into trouble with his former boss. _‘Don’t be remorseful Miss Fisher, it only confuses me.’_ She smiled involuntarily at the memory.

The Baron was watching her over his chocolate mousse.

“He seems like a good man Phryne, I’m happy for you.”

She shook herself out of her reverie, mildly perturbed at how easily he had read her; she didn’t like to be so transparent, but saw no point in denying where her mind had been. She had spent too long denying and being denied things when it came to Jack Robinson.

“He is.” She said simply. Then on a sudden impulse she added, “Did I ever tell you about the time Jack and I went to Queenscliff in search of Benito’s lost treasure?”

She hadn’t shared any of her Melbourne stories with her father before. She had after all, done her level best to keep the infuriating man out of her life. His neglect and cruelty during her childhood and the disrespect with which he had treated her mother were not things she had been willing to forgive. Here, on the way back to save her parents train-wreck of a marriage, she began to feel that maybe they could reach an understanding of a sorts. It felt good, like the lifting of another weight from her soul.

The next morning, with a red wine hangover that made her feel like her head had been cracked open and scraped off like the top of a boiled egg, Phryne decided that whilst she may not hate and resent her father as she had once done, half of the globe might be an insufficient distance if the two of them wanted to avoid inflicting continuous damage on one another. This trip was not going to be easy.

Phryne’s delicate condition prevented them from getting safely into the air – especially over open water – so they were forced to spend another day at the hotel. As luck would have it, this provided time for a letter to arrive from Jack. Very lucky, really. If it wasn’t for their overindulgence the night before they would have taken off long before it reached them, and it was unlikely it would have caught up with them before they reached London, if at all.

The letter itself proved to be everything she had hoped for. Reading through a few of the early passages with great care she strongly suspected that _Erotica of the Far East_ had found its way out of Hugh Collins’ possession without her suggestive telegram. Or perhaps her Inspector had a more diverse taste in literature than she had given him credit for. The sign off however was sad and a little strange.

_I would have come after you Phryne, I truly would. I wanted to jump off that cliff and get lost in the blue with you, I was ready to do it. You make me want to be reckless. You always have, as I have no doubt you are well aware. But I got to the station from the airfield and there was chaos – sadly you are not the only one capable of causing it. Four Woolpackers and two Portsiders dead in one night. Half of them were lads from Hugh’s gymnasium. The man would have been back at work the next day if I hadn’t put my foot down. I couldn’t leave after that, it just wouldn’t have been right. It’s going to get so much worse unless I can keep a lid on it._

_I dreamed of you that night, after you had left. It was so real Phryne, I swear I could smell your perfume, feel your breath on my skin. Perhaps, if you’re good, I’ll provide you with a full confession one day. For now, I will just tell you that in my dream, you told me that you understood, that you would come back, and that nothing in the ever-expanding universe could come between us. As a rational man, I know it wasn’t real but it felt real, like a kind of truth. It still does._

_Come back to me Phryne Fisher. I love you._

_Yours,_

_Jack x_

_P.S. Does Mr Butler have his own set of lock picks now? You are a terrible influence!_

Initially distracted by the need to re-read some of the earlier, more stimulating, paragraphs a few times, it took a little while before Phryne reached the end of the letter. The news about Hugh’s lads was heart-breaking and she wished she could be there for her friends. They might need her on the investigation too, especially if there was more to the situation than met the eye. It had happened before. The reference to a ‘full confession’ sounded promising, but what truly thrilled her was the tone; he seemed more open and bolder than she had ever known him. It was as if he had let slip the mask of sceptical cynicism with which he faced the world, something which Phryne had for some time being doing her best to encourage. She’d get him to jump off that cliff eventually.

The postscript though, what on earth was that about? The notion of her efficient, capable but largely law-abiding butler with lock picks didn’t seem very credible. The tone was teasing; this was obviously something here she was supposed to already know about, or at least be able to work out, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what it could be. Intrigued, she coaxed her aching brain into action in an attempt to fathom this new mystery.

Lock picks – someone had managed (or at least attempted), to break into something or somewhere and Jack thought she knew about it, or that she had arranged it in some way, or that she had managed it before she left. She hadn’t done anything of the sort as far as she could remember, although she couldn’t be expected to keep track of every minor legal infraction she committed. The problem was, she had no idea what could have been unlocked in her absence that Jack would assume she would know about. And why mention Mr Butler? Could food be involved in some way – perhaps someone had snuck some of the man’s excellent biscuits into Jack’s locked office? But the more likely culprit there would be Dot surely; Jack knew Dot was handy enough with a lock pick, he and Hugh had caught her breaking into a suspect’s house during a case at least once. Although Dot was probably still on her honeymoon – unless the resurgence in violence amongst the gangs and the murder of Hugh’s friends had cut that short? That, Phryne supposed, was likely. Damn. Not enough information to go on. She re-read the two short, infuriatingly enigmatic sentences again with a sudden sense of loss. She needed to see Jack’s face as he spoke to pick on the subtleties underlying his words. Her eyes strayed up to the preceding paragraph.            

_nothing in the ever-expanding universe could come between us_

She wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable having words put in her mouth like that, but they were such good words and she heard them in his voice as she read them; honest, strong and sincere, confident in her attachment to him. It was a new side of Jack Robinson, one she had only just started to get to know, and she was glad to find it in his correspondence even if the universe seemed to be expanding all too quickly between them. Urgh! She was being maudlin. Settling further under the covers, Phryne made a silent and completely insincere promise to herself that she was never going to drink that much red wine again and tried to get some sleep.

When she woke up it was still dark outside, but if they were to make any headway that morning she would need to rouse her father. Packing the last of her things into her case she continued to contemplate Jack’s mysterious postscript. She had mentioned Mr Butler in her own letter, implying (as she had assumed) that this was how Jack had known where to send his first telegram. If someone had passed the information to him surreptitiously and he didn’t know who it was…damn the Baron. This had her father’s fingerprints all over it. Still, interfering and underhanded as it was, it also seemed uncharacteristically sweet of the man. To go to so much trouble to help Jack keep in contact whilst disguising his part in the plot. She wondered absently if there might not be a greater conspiracy afoot, possibly involving Dot and Mr Butler.

She shook herself purposefully. They had a long flight over open water to contend with and this could wait. She would have a _lengthy_ conversation with the Baron when the day was over and get to the bottom of this, then include whatever she had discovered in her next letter to Jack. She should also write to Dot and Mac if she could. With a pang of guilt, she realised that she hadn’t sent any word to them – not even in her letters to Jack – she had been so caught up in the adventure and dealing with her father’s ridiculous behaviour. There was no time to respond properly now but she could send a few telegrams.

For Jack, she supplied a response to his letter:

_Always suspected you had literary talent STOP Your PS an intriguing mystery STOP Love P x_

For the newly wed Dot some happy words about her marriage and reassurance that Phryne would return safely to Melbourne:

_Hope your adventure thrilling as mine STOP Will come home safe_

For Mac, her oldest and closest friend, an opportunity to feel deeply smug and say ‘I told you so’:

_Finally with Jack STOP Look after him for me_

She was going to pay with her pride for that last one when she got back she knew. Still Mac _would_ look after him and that was something.

As Phryne and her father flew away towards Batavia and the next stage of their long journey to England, a figure in a fashionable hat (to which they brought considerable gravitas), stood in the airfield watching them leave. The plane dwindled slowly to a spec on the horizon and the Doctor quietly cursed the inflexibility of the laws of time, wishing that the universe had a kinder fate in store for its occupants. 


	3. Behind the Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hold on to your knickers fangirls. It's a Jack chapter!
> 
> Faced with an outbreak of violence Jack is forced to make a choice between duty and adventure, later he finds an unanticipated surprise, waiting in his living room.
> 
> This one's not exactly smutty, but may get a tiny bit suggestive at one point. Oh who am I kidding? It's totally smutty.

As Inspector Robinson entered the station on the way back from the airfield, he was greeted by a disproportionate level of disruption for the time of day. He inquired of the duty constable what was going on, swore mildly under his breath, then cursed loudly above his breath when he recognised some of the names in the file he was handed.

_Toby Henshaw_

_Matthew Levy_

_Daniel Parks_

Boys from Hugh’s gym. Not one of them over 17.

“Has Constable Collins been contacted?” he asked his colleague, who was looking slightly apprehensive. Jack didn’t often swear out loud.

“Yes. He offered to come in but I told him to wait until he’d heard from you.”

“And the victims’ families?”

“They’ve been informed sir; the addresses are in the file. Preliminary interviews were done at four of the households, the other two, well it was just the mother there both times. Sargent Barrie said they were too distressed to give us much and we’ll need to call back.”

The young man looked down and shuffled his feet awkwardly as he continued.

“I tried to contact you at home when the reports came in, but there was no answer. I hope that was alright. Ruckus was in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks. Someone telephoned from the hospital after a few lads were brought in in bad shape, but there were no witnesses on the scene to interview, it was just the bodies by the time we got there.”

Jack gave a curt nod and thanked the man. _He had missed the call because he had been at the airfield, kissing Phryne goodbye. It seemed like a dream._ That was a distraction and an indulgence which he could not afford to think about just now. There were six bodies at the morgue, little more than children, and he had duties to perform. He walked purposefully into his office and removed his hat and overcoat, slipping into the chair behind the desk and not thinking _in any way_ about all the times the indominable Miss Fisher had perched on the edge of it, just too close for comfort. Jack Robinson was an exceptionally good liar, when necessary, he could almost fool himself.

He picked up his telephone and called Hugh, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he was not to abandon his wife on the first day of their honeymoon and that if Jack needed any information on the victims in the morgue, he would telephone after speaking with the coroner. Hugh acquiesced reluctantly and Jack, not normally a betting man, would have laid at least a pound on seeing both Mr and Mrs Collins at the station the next day. They were good people, he was glad they had found one another.

He ran a large hand over his mouth and chin, pulling it down, and frowned at his closed door.

Phryne’s words echoed unbidden in his head.

_‘Come after me Jack Robinson.’_

Not the time. He had work to do; personal matters would have to wait. Phryne would understand, she had always appreciated the importance of putting their work first. His smile was ironic and a little bitter. That mutual understanding was part of the reason it had taken them so long to reach this point, just in time for her to be whisked away from him.

He picked up the telephone again and called Dr MacMillan at the morgue. She said the preliminary examination of all the bodies was complete and if he came down she might be able to give him a bit more detail. Not wanting to sit alone in his office, Jack agreed. Movement, that was the key. Focus on the job.

He entered the morgue to find Dr Mac examining the fractured skull of a young man Hugh had known as ‘Levo’. Fragments of bone and brain were stuck to the boy’s white-blond hair inside a congealed ring of dark blood.

“Ah Inspector.” She looked up. “This must have been a blood bath. All of the victims have major and minor contusions in addition to the cause of death. There are also some non-fatal lacerations to the face and neck on two of the victims, almost certainly caused by a broken bottle – I found small splinters of glass in the wounds. This one,” she indicated the corpse in front of her,” was hit on the back of the head by a crow bar, you can see it in the shape of the indentation here.”

Jack followed where she pointed and nodded, indicating she should continue.

“As to cause of death: two counts of blunt force trauma to the head, three severed arteries - two in the neck, one in the groin - and this one,” she pointed to a second cadaver lying on another table beside the first, “drowned in his own blood. My guess is the injuries to the face left him out cold and if he was on his back when you found him, blood from the broken nose would have drained into his lungs, preventing him from breathing. I’ll have to do a full dissection to be sure.”

Jack checked the file in his hand and confirmed that the boy had indeed been found on his back, prostrate in the gutter with his eyes closed.

“My conclusion is they killed each other in a melee,” Mac concluded briskly. I doubt they were the only ones there though. Did you round up any injured witnesses?”

“I’ve got men at the hospital now. It looks like a gang fight, more vicious than we’ve seen in a long time. Three of them were regulars at Hugh’s gym. He’ll be here tomorrow I expect.”

“Waste of a good honeymoon, but I can’t say I’m surprised.” Mac replied.

Jack gave a slight smile of agreement. It probably wasn’t fair to the lad, but if he was honest, he would be glad to have him working this case. It was going to be a difficult one and he would need his best man on the job.

“If you could send a full report to my office when you’re finished? I should go and speak with the families.”

She glanced at him over the corpse, wearing an odd expression, as if she was about to say something but then thought better of it.

“I’ll keep you informed Inspector.”

He nodded a farewell and left, inwardly grateful that Mac had not brought up Miss Fisher. Behind his back, Dr MacMillan watched him go with a mix of pity and exasperation. Honestly what had Phryne done to that poor man? The woman was impossible.

 

 

The rest of Jack’s shift passed in ugly tedium. There were the families, each one a tragic tapestry of trauma and suspicion of authority, reluctant to say anything in case it brought more trouble. The witness statements from the men at the hospital had come in; Hugh would be useful in following up on those when he got back, he knew some of them from the gym and might be able to get more out of them than Jack could. The inspector felt rather proud of his young protégé for that. The man was essentially guileless, which was a disadvantage in a police officer, but he had other qualities and was learning to use them.

There was no real mystery to the case, just a gruesome kind of busy work. A grisly game of who killed who, played against poor liars and frightened, injured children. It would almost certainly be wrapped up in a few days despite the number of bodies, but the feeling on the streets was troubling. There was an anger there, a brewing tit for tat and blood for blood which needed to be stopped before this got any further out of hand. That would mean manpower, strategizing, targeted raids, strong arming some and bargaining with others. It wasn’t going to let up any time soon.

At the end of his shift, Jack tidied away the case files on other recent gang deaths which he had been combing through. He had been looking for a possible catalyst for the night’s brawl or anything he could use as leverage to prevent the next one, but so far without much success.

He poured himself a generous measure of whiskey and permitted his mind to wander to other matters.

Phryne.

He couldn’t go after her. He had thought, as he drove from that airfield in a kind of daze, that he would. Planned to take all his savings and backdated leave and just go. A leap of faith made possible because despite the teasing and the terror she could inspire in him, he trusted her implicitly. She made him want to be reckless. He would allow himself a mad, impossible adventure, with no plan other than to find out what happened next. It was a romantic dream but a practical impossibility. Following that dream from the airfield had felt like releasing a part of himself that already existed, freeing something locked away in the deeper recesses of his soul, but the city on the brink of chaos…he could not abandon Melbourne now and remain Jack Robinson.

He swirled the whiskey around his mouth and considered his options: he would need to speak Mr Butler to get details of her flight plan if he wanted to contact her. He frowned to himself; Phryne knew that what she was asking might be impossible. She also did not _need_ him to follow her, she needed him to know that she wanted him to. He picked up a pen from his desk and began to draft a telegram, choosing his words with great care. If he couldn’t give her what she asked for, he would have to up the stakes; teasing and flattery, that was the key. He was getting better at this game. He had always had a certain amount of talent and - he permitted himself a wry smile - he had been learning from the best.

 

 

Sinking into bed that night, fresh from a long bath and a hasty meal from the pie cart eaten at the kitchen table, Jack felt an overwhelming and exhausting ambivalence. The feel of her lips on his in the early morning air, his hand on her waist under her flight coat. The bright blazing smile in her eyes and the glint of the swallow pin on her scarf. His gift to her – love me and I will never clip your wings – if that moment right there was all they ever had, part of him felt it would have been worth every second.

Another, somewhat more insistent, part of him was cursing both her father and all the gangs of Melbourne in several languages and no uncertain terms, for being the last in the long and increasingly ridiculous list of things that had conspired to keep them apart. Phryne’s aunt Prudence and a phosphorescent bottle of radioactive eyedrops were particular favourites. Gallows humour. Always a blessing in times of trial, and more than once he’d had cause to believe that Phryne Fisher had been sent by the gods try him. He pondered likely suspects from the classics; probably Dionysius, although Athena was a possibility. There was no way the Christian God of his youth would hazard the association; he wouldn’t want to run the risk of being outdone. Smiling grimly, he drifted off to sleep and dreamed he was walking through a deserted airfield at sunset, watching the sky.

 

 

Jack was woken by a noise. It wasn’t one he could place, something like an engine and something like the rush of the sea. Perhaps it had been part of his dream. After the first clear vision, in which he could feel every gust of wind as it rippled through the grass, his dreams had become confused and fragmented things, bodies and blood and empty rooms and the sea pounding against the foreshore.

He opened his eyes and saw a light shining through the crack under his bedroom door. He had turned off all the lights before he went to bed. Someone was in the house.

Jack did not keep a gun at his home, but wary of burglars and the enemies his profession made, he did keep a heavy wooden cosh in the drawer of his bedside cabinet. He slid it out, opening the door silently and padding down the hall. The light was coming from the living room, the door was ajar; he could smell her perfume before he reached it.

Jack had never had a lucid dream before. It was surreal to know in a dream that you were dreaming. He set the cosh down in the hall and went to straighten his tie. As he was in pyjamas, this manoeuvre was not very effective. Resisting the urge to knock on the partially open living room door (it was his house and his dream after all), he walked inside.

“Jack!”

She was sitting across his armchair in a gown of burgundy silk - it was oddly rumpled, not at all the perfect picture of sophistication she usually presented. Her lips and eyes were painted, but her hair was unadorned and she was barefoot. He could see the red polish on her toes as they dangled over the armrest. Her expression was hard to read. On the surface, she looked as she had done at the airfield, that pure and unrestrained joy with which she had said farewell. Underneath though there was something else, something like remorse and a sadness tinged with pain.

“Miss Fisher, am I going to be forced to charge you with breaking and entering?”

“Again, Jack? I thought we had long established that it wasn’t worth the paperwork.”

He moved closer and she rose from the chair eagerly, meeting him halfway across the room. He noticed the tiny swallow pin, fixed at the shoulder of her gown. He reached out and stroked it softly with the tip of a finger. He could feel the ridges of the metal, warm from the heat of her body. The broach looked different to how he remembered it, it was chipped slightly on one side, the metal discoloured as if from exposure to the elements.

“This looks like it’s taken a beating?” He said softly. The question was not insistent; she owed him no explanations.

“The universe is a dangerous place. But I kept it safe. I told you that if anyone else tried to stake a claim they would have to fight me for it.”

He put his arm around her waist as he had at the airfield. How many hours ago was that? Did time even matter here? Did it even count in dreams? He drew her close and kissed her for the first time with no-one watching. Kissed her as he had wanted to kiss her for longer than an honourable man would care to admit. Deep and slow, without restraint. She pressed herself into him and wrapped her hands around his neck, stroking his hair and holding nothing back.

Jack had forgotten that he was dreaming. His world had shrunk to nothing but the feel of Phryne’s lips and the taste of her skin as he kissed her neck. He found the line of buttons down the back of her dress and felt her shiver in anticipation as his deft fingers parted the fabric, stroking softly down the length of her spine as it fell away. Phryne drew back just enough to pull the gown over her head and fling it back towards the chair.

She was completely naked. The sight left him momentarily stunned, he felt as if all the air had been removed from the room. When Phryne reached out to undo the buttons of his pyjama shirt with an expression of undisguised lust, he abandoned the last shreds of his self-control and pounced. He pushed her back against the wall, kissing her fiercely and trailing soft bites across her neck. The noise she made when he bent to take her nipple in his mouth may have been the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

She finally managed to undo his buttons - he could feel the sharp sting of her nails across his chest - then her hands descended and she was palming his cock through the soft cotton of his pyjamas. He let out an inarticulate moan and ground himself against her, before leaning in to growl “bedroom” into her ear. Phryne did not need telling twice; she grabbed his hand, pulling him behind her through the door to the hallway and laughing aloud when she realised she didn’t know which room she was leading them to. The sight of her standing in his hallway, naked and lit up with mirth, was too much; Jack couldn’t resist the urge to press her once again to the wall and kiss her till they were both breathless.

They slowed as they entered the bedroom. Phryne climbed into his bed and pulled him down on top of her, gently stripping away his last layer and holding him close as he pressed a tender kiss to her lips. Grinning mischievously, she rolled them over, and he huffed out a little laugh at the victorious look on her face when she got him on his back. Then she sank onto him and it was replaced at once by an expression of pure bliss. When she started moaning out his name in pleasure as she pulsed her hips against him, Jack was certain nothing in his life had ever felt so close to perfect.                 

In this long moment of suspended time somewhere in a dream, they had their gaudy night. He hoped it was a taste of things to come. Afterwards, they lay replete and satisfied in comfortable darkness, holding and being held as if the press of skin on skin could stave off morning and whispered that they loved each other, sharing at last the open secret neither could deny.

Jack told Phryne why he could not come after her, but she said already knew and that she understood. That made sense, he supposed; it was his dream after all. The last thing he remembered before drifting from dream to dreamless sleep was her face, characteristically intense and her voice uncharacteristically serious.

_“I may be going somewhat further than I intended to, but I swear to you I am coming back. Don’t you dare give up on me, Jack Robinson, because there is nothing in the ever-expanding universe that could come between us now.”_

 

Sitting in his shirtsleeves in the living room and munching on his breakfast, Jack couldn’t drag his thoughts away from the dream. It had been so intense that when he awoke he wasn’t sure at first that it had ended. With his eyes closed he could still smell the lingering scent of sex and jasmine, although the bed next to him was cold and he could tell he was alone. It had felt so real. More so than many memories he had of actual events; the thought was disturbing. He kept picking at his recollections until distraction presented itself in to form of a piece of paper by the chair where, in his dream, Phryne had lounged luxuriant in her burgundy silk. Jack had not entered this room last night, going straight from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom after getting in from work. Unfolding the paper, Jack smiled, it was a list of hotels at which Phryne and her father would presumably stop during the first few days of the trip to England; not a full flight plan by a long shot, and the route seemed surprisingly circumspect - they seemed to be spending some time in Darwin. Hopefully Phryne was planning on getting that rusty looking plane checked over before flying out over the open ocean. At least he now had an address to send his telegram to, and he dropped into the Post Office on the way to work to send it.

The day passed much the same as the previous one with the exception of the arrival of Constable and Mrs Collins, for which Jack mentally awarded himself a victory in his bet. Collins thoroughly earned his promotion in the interrogation room, taking the lead alongside a junior constable recently assigned to City South and Jack continued to go through the paperwork whilst Dot fussed about him providing baked goods, typing, and cautious suggestions. She was clearly under the impression that there was a vacancy at City South for a Lady Detective, but not entirely certain if she should fill it. In fact, both the baked goods and the suggestions were rather good and whilst he knew he really shouldn’t encourage this sort of thing, Jack found he welcomed her presence.

In the late afternoon, Dorothy Collins entered the Inspector’s office after a polite knock and an invitation, entirely unlike Miss Fisher would have done. She was carrying a cup of tea and a sticky bun on a plate, and wearing an expression of nervous bravado which made Jack quite certain that both items could be viewed as a bribe. ‘Here we go.’ He thought to himself as she handed them over.

“I thought you might be hungry Inspector. Hugh’s just finished with the last of the witnesses from the hospital. I can type up his notes and bring them in for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs Collins.” Feeling that he should really not be encouraging the woman to work for free, especially after her honeymoon had been cut so drastically short he added. “I appreciate your efforts in assisting us but if you would rather be at home…” He trailed off at the look on her face.

“It’s very quiet at Wardlow Inspector, I’d much rather make myself useful.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

She continued in a rush, as if she thought she might lose her nerve unless she said it quickly.

“I know it’s only been a day, but I wondered if you had word from Miss Fisher? I thought she might telephone when she landed or send a telegram but we’ve not heard anything.”

Jack pushed the memory of his dream as far down as he could. The vision of Phryne lounging across the armchair in his living room was refusing to fade away, along with certain other memories that he was determined not to dwell on in public.

“No. No I’ve not heard anything.” And because Dot looked crestfallen he added, “But I did find this in my house this morning.”

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the list of hotels he had found on the chair in his living room.

“I suspect _someone_ may have broken into my house at some point on the night of your wedding and left it for me.”

Dorothy grinned.

“I can’t say I’m entirely surprised Inspector.”

“I sent her a telegram this morning. Don’t worry, I’m sure we will hear from her in a few days. Probably with a litany of complaints about her father. She’ll be alright, she always is.” He was painfully aware that this reassurance was meant for himself as much as the young woman in front of him, but it seemed to pass muster. He gave Mrs Collins a rare smile and took a bite of the bun she had brought for him, effectively bringing the conversation to a close.

 

 

The next day Phryne’s letter arrived for Jack. He did indeed open it at his desk, on his lunchbreak. He was immensely relieved to have done so with the doors closed. She loved him. That was a hell of an achievement right there. Whatever happened afterwards, even if she never came back (he clamped down on that thought, it was too dark a path to go down just yet) he would always have that. It was a liberating thought. By the third paragraph he got up and locked the doors, blushing furiously and deciding he needed a moment undisturbed to calm down and regroup. Also, to read the letter again. And again. He gave a self-deprecating little smile – really at this point he shouldn’t have been surprised.

He calmed his breathing and steadied his nerves, took a long draught of his tea which had gone tepid at some point between his second and third readings, and considered his response. He wanted to answer back, and as soon as possible, but there wasn’t a chance he was going to write _that_ kind of letter at the station, locked door or not. There was however, something he needed to do at once. With a slight pause and a steadying breath, he gathered his hat and coat and marched out of the station. He needed to send a telegram. Also, he felt a brisk walk might do him some good. The blonde woman behind the counter at the Post Office smiled at him indulgently as she read his missive and promised to dispatch it as a matter of urgency. He shook his head at his own sentimentality but couldn’t help smile a little at the familiar English accent and noticed as he did so that her lipstick was exactly the same shade as Phryne’s. He was seeing echoes of her everywhere.

 

 

Jack Robinson did not approve of banning books. He loved literature, had done since his earliest days. He was however a man of the law who almost always did the right thing. Almost. He had been known to bend the rules on occasion and in his opinion, this particular law was nothing but an ass. Hugh had, with characteristic lack of guile, left that damn book in a station full of coppers and Jack had found it being passed around a group of junior officers who were sniggering gleefully at the illustrations and attempting to one up each other with entirely unconvincing tales of their sexual prowess.

After putting the unholy fear of Jack Robinson into them with a quiet and deadly civility that cowed each man for days, he had confiscated the book, intending to put the thing straight into the evidence locker. It irked him, but it seemed like the most prudent response given Hugh’s lack of discretion. That was until he read the inscription on the flyleaf.

_For Darling Phryne, with fond memories of our time together. Take the world by storm. x_

That made things difficult. This book had been a gift to Miss Fisher from…someone…he avoided examining that thought in detail with a self-control which cracked around the edges and made his jaw clench.

Entering it as evidence would lead to an investigation. He didn’t want his professional relationship with Miss Fisher to be derailed over something as idiotic as the _Obscene and Indecent Publications Act_ when her assistance had on several occasions brought killers to justice. As the book had not yet been entered as evidence he could in theory just return it to her. On the other hand, the thought of doing so, of the way she would peer at him through her eyelashes with that look that said _‘Yes indeed Inspector, and what are you going to do about it?’_ ; he was having a hard time maintaining his composure just at the thought. Add to that the fact that the book was apparently a gift from an ex-lover...

And that was how _Erotica of the Far East_ ended up in Jack’s house. He had only tried to read it once. The respectable part of him had alternately swallowed, goggled and cursed the twist of fate that had resulted in Phryne Fisher up-ending his ordered and sensible life. Something she could apparently manage to do now without either her intention or even presence. Another, deeper, darker part of Jack Robinson was smiling a crooked little smile to himself and mentally taking notes. It was a part of him which had been growing stronger since he had met the irrepressible Miss Fisher and which, for the first time, Jack now gave free reign. Crooked smile firmly in place, he took up his pen.

Phryne’s telegrams appeared a day later. Jack waited for further news. He had no more information about where he should send another message. No-one had heard from her. Then a phone call – she had failed to make her landing in Batavia. She was missing, last seen at a hotel in Darwin, the local airfield could not even confirm for certain she had been there. After two weeks, the search for her plane was called off, presumed to be lost at sea.  

Somehow, despite the cold light of rational reality that threatened to choke the last of the life from his heart, a part of Jack Robinson never gave up hoping she would return. _The hope_ , he often thought, the hope was the worst part. As the weeks stretched into months and hope drained from those around him, his solidified into a profound and increasingly irrational certainty. A life raft of agony he had fashioned for his own torment, but which nevertheless kept him alive. And every night as he drifted towards sleep, he heard her voice again:

_'I may be going somewhat further than I intended to, but I swear to you I am coming back. Don’t you dare give up on me, Jack Robinson, because there is nothing in the ever-expanding universe that could come between us now.'_


	4. All the charms of Sycorax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and her father fly out over open water, danger and adventure await.
> 
> A short one today - full of drama, spacey drama!

The sky was clear and the Baron mercifully quiet as Phryne piloted her little plane expertly out over the open ocean. As Australia retreated further and further behind her, she felt again that sense of loss. A pull on her soul as if it was being stretched tight and part of it sat waiting with whiskey, leaning against a Melbourne mantelpiece. She shook the feeling off. The weather could be dangerous and unpredictable over open water; there were unexpected air currents, battering winds, and sudden drops in pressure to contend with. It was lucky she was such an excellent pilot! Her father, in his capacity as ‘navigator’ promptly fell asleep, and she flew in comfortable silence between the dazzling blue of the sky above her and the changeable shades of the deep ocean below.

Sometime later the Baron awoke with a snort and a short barrage of bad language.

“God dammit, we’re still in this infernal contraption!”

“Well you can get out whenever you like, but I can't say I’d recommend it just now.”

“How much longer till we hit land?”

“Not long now, we're making pretty good time.”

A conversation at high volume over the sound of the wind and the engine wasn’t really what Phryne wanted at that moment, and she was happy to lapse back into silence again, albeit a slightly less comfortable one.  She had not forgotten her suspicions about her father’s role in Jack’s apparent omniscience when it came to her whereabouts, but didn’t want to attempt that little chat in the air. It would have to wait until they landed, when she would be able to concentrate on sorting his half-truths from his lies. It was around fifteen minutes before he spoke again.

“Good God Phryne, what the Hell is that?”

She had to crane her head around to see what he was looking at. Behind them and a little to the left was the strangest thing Phryne had ever seen; it was presumably some kind of air craft, but the design was unlike any plane she had ever heard of - it was shaped not unlike the blade of a sickle but broader in the middle, jet black and huge, larger than any plane in existence to Phryne’s knowledge. It was moving silently, perfectly matching their speed, flanking them.

“I have no idea, but I’d hazard a guess at serious trouble.” She answered.

For the next minutes, anxiety, terror and a thrilling mix of curiosity and excitement battled for dominance in Phryne’s brain. The Baron’s running commentary, which was both foul mouthed and repetitive, did nothing to aid her concentration. Abruptly, the craft vanished, blinking out of existence as if it had never been there, before reappearing a spilt second later, ahead of them and a little to the right. From this distance, it was possible to make out shifting patterns on the surface of the fuselage, a swirl of gloss against black that reflected the previously peaceful blue of sea and sky. It was, in a way she couldn't quite articulate to herself, profoundly disturbing. The craft had no windows, no way to see in or out, but it gave the impression somehow that it was watching them and its intent, if not actively hostile, was definitely far from friendly.

The Baron responded to this change of pace with a strangled scream which seemed nothing short of terrified. The sound unsettled Phryne a great deal. She had rarely seen her father afraid and had never imagined that his control could break so badly. Gripping the controls of the plane till her knuckles went white and clenching her jaw, she focused on keeping them airborne and heading on towards land.

Ten minutes later it happened again - the flash, the shift in position. This time the ‘plane’ appeared still off to the right but a little behind and close enough that she could hear a very faint hum. Then again, right behind them this time – the Baron’s shout letting her know they had not been forgotten about. It seemed to be circling them, disappearing and reappearing at irregular intervals, watching them. This continued for what felt like about an hour, during which the Baron was sick over the side of the plane and Phryne had begun to feel the terror recede a little. She didn’t like the craft, but it wasn’t actually attacking them and really, the possibility that she was looking at real honest to God _flying saucer_ was spectacularly thrilling. Jack would never in a million years believe this and probably neither would anyone else, but really, what else could it be?

At this point, Phryne began to notice something which was little more than a niggling concern at first. An inconsistency so minor when compared to the presence of what she was now thinking of openly as the alien space ship that it barely even registered, but slowly it began to ramp up her fear until the flight felt like nothing more than a nightmare from which she could not wake up: they were not running out of fuel. Every time the ship jumped to a new spot, the fuel gauge on her plane flicked back up to where it had been when the Baron first spotted the craft. This, combined with the unchanging landscape of sea and sky left her feeling that they were not in fact moving towards land, but trapped, suspended in an endless void of blue with nothing but the silent, monstrous craft and no chance of escape.

Hours passed. They should have hit land long ago and tears were now forcing their way out of Phryne’s eyes. She wanted to scream, to run, to fly away, but she was already flying and still she couldn’t escape, and screaming in this situation would do her no good whatsoever. She couldn’t stop the tears though; they blurred her vision and further hampered her ability to navigate. Just as she felt she couldn’t take a second more of this endless, terrifying torment, the ship did something which not only made her scream in earnest but also fumble the controls, causing the plane to plummet 20 feet before she righted it.

The craft had appeared directly in front of them, no more than 5 feet ahead and maintaining a perfect equidistance from the nose even as they dropped towards the sea below. It was obscuring her view of everything beyond the front of the plane, filling her entire field of vision, the swirling black lines on the surface playing tricks with her eyes. The Baron’s swearing gave way to a whining gibber and she saw him vomit once again over the side.

At that precise moment, a voice, male, deep and warm - English with a hint of an accent which she could not place - boomed out over the sounds of wind, engines and the Baron’s now incoherent noises of panic.

“I can get you to safety but you will have to do exactly what I say without argument. Time is not exactly on our side, but I can usually find a way around that.”

Glancing to the left in the direction of the voice, Phryne saw, of all the incongruous things, a spinning blue box around 4ft square and 7ft high, topped with a white light and with the word POLICE inscribed on it in white letters. It had scorch marks all down one side and looked tiny next to the monstrosity which had been stalking them. However, as soon as it appeared, the massive ship immediately retreated. It was not the quick blip in and out of existence which it had been so unnerving, but a slow, smooth manoeuvre, backing off several hundred feet and moving left, squaring up to the newcomer as if preparing for a fight but not yet ready to engage.

The voice came again.

“That toy plane of yours is not going to enjoy it when I break you out of the temporal loop. I can give you a bit of shielding and some power but you really, really don’t want to hang around here much longer. Head northwest, there’s an island not far ahead, maybe 30 miles, you should be able to set down if you’re lucky. I’ll come and pick you up when I’ve dealt with the Sycorax.”

Phryne had not understood much of that, but her instincts for survival were legendary and through the haze of madness she focused on one thing - if she could land her plane on an island 30 miles northwest, this nightmare would be over. She could do that.

With no idea if she could be heard by whoever was in the box and in a voice which sounded braver than she felt, Phryne shouted in the direction of the peculiar vehicle.

“I think I can manage that. Who do I have to thank for my rescue?”

“I’m the Doctor. No thanks yet, we still need to get you out of here. Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

There was a crack, and a flash of white-blue lightning, like the sparks from a Van de Graff generator, shot out of the top of the police box. It split in two directions, connecting with the Gypsy Moth and the alien ship at the same time. The effect was immediate - it was like hitting a pocket of heavy turbulence, the air pressure pulsing, rapid as a heartbeat. A crackle of the same white-blue electrical energy appeared to be surrounding the plane in a sphere and thin tendrils of smoke began to seep from the engine. Veering off in the direction the voice had indicated and yelling at her father to stop whining and watch for a landing place, Phryne never saw what became of her rescuer. She couldn’t help thinking that, gallant as the man had seemed, his odds did not look good.                    

Phryne barely had control of the plane by the time she located the island, thick plumes of smoke were now rising from the engine, choking her lungs and obscuring her vision. Dimly she made out white sands and a treeline and aimed as best she could for the beachhead, pulling up in an attempt to at least get the undercarriage of the plane down before the nose. She just managed it, but came in much too hard and far too fast; the wheels buckled beneath them as they scraped up the beach, digging a deep furrow in the sand. The crackle of electricity which seemed to have somehow absorbed the worst of the impact, snapped off as the belly of the plane connected with the beach. Up ahead and getting closer very fast, was a tumbled scree of rocks stretching down towards the water.

They hit the rock with a crash; the nose buckled, crushing inwards, and the plane tipped on its side throwing Phryne from her seat to the sand below and knocking the wind out of her. The Baron was still trapped in the plane. A piece of metal torn from the wing was thrown from the wreckage and caught her a stinging blow to the back of the head as Phryne sprawled on the ground. The edges of her vision went black, and she lay dazed and immobile on the beach until the sun was low in the sky.

When she came to she found herself slumped where she had fallen, the taste of blood and sand in her mouth. The front of the plane was completely destroyed, smashed to pieces on the rocks. Looking up she let out a long, strangled cry.

Henry Fisher was dead, crushed beneath the broken body of the plane. Phryne was alone, on an unknown island under an unforgiving sky. 


	5. Discrepancies in Space and Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in Melbourne Jack has recruited Miss Fisher's family to try and find out what became of her and her father, but Mac is worried that the investigation is taking its toll on him.
> 
> This is an angsty Jack chapter, he's so pretty when he's sad.

The day after the search for Miss Fisher’s plane was called off, Jack strode into her solicitor’s office, his face set with icy determination and Collins tripping over his feet behind him in an effort to keep up. Truthfully the younger man was – although he would never admit it – a little worried about his boss, but when Inspector Robinson was in this kind of mood there was nothing on God’s earth that could stand in his way, and Hugh Collins certainly did not intend to try.

Jack flashed his badge at the desk clerk without preamble.

“Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, I need to speak to Mr Mortimer in connection with a missing persons case.”

The young man looked alarmed, and after one glance at Jack’s face appeared to decide that whatever storm was about to follow in this man’s wake, he was not paid enough to deal with it.

“Of course, sir. If you would follow me.”

The officers were ushered into a large, well-appointed office where a man in his mid-50s with a large handlebar moustache was looking up from a pile of paperwork. The clerk introduced the newcomers nervously and backed out of the room as swiftly as politeness would allow.

“Mr Mortimer. I’m investigating the disappearance of Miss Phryne Fisher and her father Henry Fisher, Baron of Richmond. I understand you handle Miss Fisher’s legal affairs?”

“Yes. I heard about her disappearance of course. A terrible tragedy, she was such a vivacious young lady."

Jack’s face remained completely immobile as he responded.

“I’ll need you to turn over any paperwork you have which may shed light on her disappearance. Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to harm Miss Fisher or her father?”

“Harm? Not that I’d know of, although I understand her professional life was not without its risks. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about her father, she never mentioned him, although she did wire a considerable sum of money to her mother in England quite recently. Her will was also updated shortly before she left. The bulk of her fortune will now pass to her mother I believe.”

The first part of this wasn’t news to Jack; Phryne had sent money to plug the hole left in her parents’ finances after her father had liquidated his assets and fled to Australia, in an attempt to escape the murderous intentions of shell shocked relative. The man in question – Eugene Fisher - was no longer at liberty, it wouldn’t help him find her. The second part however, he had not known about, although given her parents’ precarious financial situation and the risks of an international flight the move made sense.

Mr Mortimer continued a little nervously. “I’ll have my secretary bring you anything we have. In the ordinary course of events we would begin processing the handing over of her estate…”

The Inspector’s face remained perfectly impassive, even as the man’s casual words cut deep. 

“I’m afraid that will have to wait until we have completed our inquires. I will contact you if I have further questions.” His response was delivered in a flat, professional tone of unassailable authority, but somewhere behind the mask of Inspector Robinson, Jack’s mind was full of a blank, white screaming.

_She wasn’t dead_. She wasn’t dead, and he was going to prove it.

Back in his office, Jack looked down at the papers spread out on his desk, the stack of folders detailing the latest developments in the ongoing gang situation sat ignored on top of a file cabinet. There were too many unanswered questions here. Too many loose ends for him to give up trying to find her. He sighed and attempted to look at the evidence objectively.

Phryne had altered her will immediately after the resolution of the Eugene Fisher case and left Melbourne on the 6th of September, she had left her hotel in Darwin on the 10th of September but there was no record of her at the airfield and she had never arrived at her scheduled stop in Batavia. During that time, she had sent him a letter in response to his telegram telling her he would need to remain in Melbourne which was dated September 6th. Which made no sense because he had sent that telegram on September 7th. The letter was also unstamped and there was no postmark on the envelope. The date must have been an error on her part because the letter clearly referenced his telegram.

That was another inconsistency. They had exchanged two letters in less than a week. Phryne’s misdated one was apparently sent from Oodnadatta - the first stop off point listed on the sheet of paper Jack was fairly sure she had left for him; there was no direct airmail service to Melbourne from Oodnadatta. Her letter should have taken at least three days to reach him by train but, assuming it was posted on the 7th rather than the 6th, it had in fact taken less than a day. Could she perhaps have found someone at the airfield willing to deliver it in person? That was possible – but why then had it arrived with the regular post? Also, that didn’t explain how his reply – sent to her in Darwin – had also arrived too quickly. Less than two days. Even with an overnight airmail service, sorting and delivery should have taken longer at such a distance. She had received it though, her final telegram made that clear enough ‘ _Always suspected you had literary talent STOP Your PS an intriguing mystery STOP Love P x_ ’. It had been sent on the morning of the day she left. There simply wasn’t time, not if she was really in Darwin, which she must have been, otherwise she would never have received his message.

He put his head in his hands and massaged the skin on his forehead, pulling his fingers down towards his chin and frowning. If this was any other case, if Phryne was here, trying to convince him that these little details mattered, he would have told her that she was clutching at straws. Even if there was something strange in these details, the hotel records showed her leaving Darwin on the 10th and her flight plan – provided by Mr Butler, who claimed to have no knowledge of the shorter list which had appeared in Jack’s house - had her heading towards Indonesia where she had not apparently arrived. Where else could she have gone and why?

_‘Don’t you dare give up on me, Jack Robinson, because there is nothing in the ever-expanding universe that could come between us now.’_

His hand shaking slightly, he forced himself to pick up one of the two documents lying unobtrusively on his desk; one current, one superseded. The heading on the cover page was neatly printed in an understated and elegant font, belying the weight of the contents. The Last Will and Testament of The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher. He did not want to read it, but for her sake, he needed to find answers.

As a sweltering summer heat swept over Melbourne, the tensions between rival gangs continued to erupt into violence which kept Jack, and the whole of the Victoria Police Force, not only occupied but run ragged. ‘ _For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring_ ’ he thought ruefully. Without Phryne’s presence, he had no-one to share the observation with who would appreciate the reference. Flirting via Shakespeare over corpses, who else but Phryne Fisher could bring that perverse little joy into his life? And now it was gone, another little loss to add to the weighty absence in his soul.

He had taken to pursuing the matter of Miss Fisher’s disappearance mostly in his spare time, as his superiors had been very definite on the subject of their priorities when it came to police resources. When possible he delegated to Collins and when not, he could be found staying late after his shifts, often accompanied by Dr MacMillan and whiskey (which he steadfastly refused to drink whilst on duty) and occasionally by Dorothy Collins and biscuits (which he was happy to eat at any time).

Jack was pragmatic enough, and an experienced enough officer, to understand that too rigid an adherence to rules for their own sake was a problem in police work. He had on very rare occasions accepted drinks from witnesses out of politeness, and because accepting hospitality loosened tongues. He was also, however, a keen enough observer of his own nature to know when he needed to set himself boundaries he could not cross. Accordingly, he watched the clock carefully before indulging and performed his duties with an unsmiling, single-minded focus that impressed his superiors and left his friends increasingly troubled.

Mac was insistent that Margaret Fisher would not have had anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance, but that she wouldn’t trust Henry further than Dot could spit. Both she and Jack suspected the Baron of having a hand in the disappearance, possibly intending to obtain the money Phryne had left her from his wife at a later stage, but neither of them thought it likely he would actually have harmed her. Consequently, Dot and Hugh were engaged tracking down lists of the Baron’s former associates in case he had made contact with any of them, and sending Cec and Bert to reach out on an unofficial basis. If any of them had heard from him, they weren’t talking.

It was an irony that was lost on none of them that the niggling confusion surrounding the last days of Miss Fishers’ known whereabouts would probably have been resolved much more swiftly had she been working the case. Not least because Phryne would have no qualms, jurisdictional limitations, or time and financial constraints when it came to heading straight to Darwin to canvass witnesses directly. Her friends were having to make do with reports provided – late and grudgingly – by police forces from two other states, including those from rural towns which were hard to reach as well as guarded and parochial in their attitude to out of state coppers from the city.

Mac was the first to start believing that Phryne was not coming home. She didn’t want to accept it, but life had taught her repeatedly that the universe rarely played fair, and she had known her friend too long and too well to think of her as invulnerable. There were riddles and inconsistencies surrounding Phryne’s disappearance to be sure, and Mac was more than prepared make whoever was responsible pay in blood if there was evidence of foul play, but she had never discounted the possibility that the apparently indominable Miss Fisher had simply flown out over the ocean and succumbed to the elements. As their investigation dragged on and success seemed less and less likely, her greater motivation came from the last missive she had received from Phryne – ‘ _Finally with Jack STOP Look after him for me_.’ She might not have intended the message as a dying wish, but if that was what it had become then Elizabeth MacMillan intended to honour it. The man was doing an impressive job of maintaining his composure in public, but Mac could sense something more dangerous under the surface, and his steadfast and unwavering denial that Phryne was dead – even in the face of the evidence - was beginning to cause her real concern. The Inspector – or Jack as he now was - was clearly not himself.

Dorothy Collins was initially quite ready to believe that Phryne might have been waylaid on her way to England, although she was less convinced by the idea that Miss Fisher’s own parents were behind her disappearance. In her experience of living with Miss Phryne, people were always looking to abduct, abscond with or murder her boss – and although she was generally able to extricate herself from any trouble she got into, there were times when Miss Fisher needed the assistance of her friends. Dot had come a long way from the timid person she had been when she had first come to work for Phryne. She had grown from a girl too afraid to answer a telephone, to a woman who could, when necessary, knock out a grown man with a thermos of hot tea or turn her hand to a spot of break and enter – in the service of justice of course. With Miss Phryne gone Dot had lost a mentor, surrogate sister, and friend, but she had also found unknown reserves of resilience within herself. She had become a talented investigator in her own right, and even as she prayed for her mistress’ safe return and worried every minute about what might have happened to her, she took care to look after those around her. She was sure that neither the Inspector nor Doctor MacMillan would ever eat a square meal if it wasn’t for her and Mr Butler. She did her best to shoulder the emotional weight of their continual, frustrating lack of progress with kind words and confectionery, finding to her own surprise that whilst her heart was broken by the experience, she was not. It was a long time before she gave up hope, and when she did, she simply prayed the harder for it and went on regardless.    

It wasn’t until January rolled around that Mac decided enough was enough. Jack had taken leave over Christmas. According to Hugh, it was the first time the man had had a ‘holiday’ since his wife had left him, and he had spent it testing the bounds of his authority by canvassing witnesses across the length of Australia. The journey had evidently not proved fruitful, and Mac decided that it was time for her to get Jack Robinson outrageously drunk, in the hope that the man would let go of some part of the grief that he appeared to be suppressing through sheer stubborn, bull-headed force of will. An unhappy conversation with Dot during the Inspector’s absence over Christmas had also provided her with an entirely unexpected ally.

On his return from Darwin, Mac dropped into Jack’s office and all but frogmarched him to her flat on the grounds that she had received some excellent scotch for Christmas and she had no intention of delving further into the mysteries surrounding Phryne’s disappearance without access to it. He agreed without much protest, gathering a folder of relevant paperwork, along with his hat and coat.

Depositing their outerwear on pegs in the hall, she led the way to the sitting room and poured both of them a very large measure of whiskey, tipping hers back at once and watching as he followed suit. Hmm. This might be easier than she had thought.

“So, Inspector. What did you find?”

Jack took a seat in an armchair next to a small coffee table, tossed the folder down onto it and ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration and bewilderment.

“The more I look at this case the less sense it makes. I think I’m less sure now of what went on before she vanished than I was before I left.”

Mac rolled her eyes.

“Sounds like Phryne, I can hardly say I’m surprised. Go on.”

Jack shifted to the table and pulled out the sheet of paper he had found in his flat the morning after Phryne had left. It contained, in Phryne’s elegant, practiced cursive, the addresses of three hotels; the first in Oodnadatta, South Australia – dated September 6th-7th, the second a tiny place in the Northern Territories called Harts Range – dated September 7th-8th and the last in Darwin September 8th – 10th.

“These are the addresses I found in my house the morning after she left. They could in theory have been put there by someone else, but I can’t imagine who else would break into my home to do so and no-one we know has been prepared to confess to it.”

He rummaged again in the file.

“Here,” he pulled out another, much longer list, “is the flight plan she gave to Mr Butler before she left.”

He handed both papers to Mac.

“I know this Jack; the dates don’t match and there’s no mention of Harts Range on her original flight plan. Did you find out why?”

Jack sighed. “Yes. It’s because she never intended for them to stop there. Her father got into an altercation with a man at a bar in Oodnadatta and they were delayed in setting out whilst she secured his release from the local police station. Officers there confirmed that he was arrested and cautioned before charges were dropped the next day after quote ‘that angry Shelia with the dark hair paid up’. It was definitely them, they identified her from a picture and had photos of the Baron from his arrest.”

He extracted the mug shots from the file and Mac looked them over carefully.

“That puts paid to the theory that she never really left Melbourne and slipped you the papers after she supposedly left. You know I never thought that one was very likely.”

“Neither did I, but I’ve learned never to assume anything when it comes to Miss Fisher so I checked at the guest house. The staff confirmed they were there, and that they arrived without any notice,” he responded before extracting his notebook.

“Then there is the matter of her correspondence,” he continued. “We have one letter.” He picked it out of the folder still in its envelope, “and three telegrams,” he extracted them too. “She was also sent one letter and two telegrams by me and we know she received at least the first telegram and the letter because she refers to them in her replies.”

“And?” Mac cajoled; there was clearly a point to this.

“Except she didn’t. The Post Office has no record at any of these locations of any correspondence going either to or from Miss Fisher during her stay. This despite the fact that I went into the office in person and sent both telegrams myself. Harts Range is completely isolated too, it doesn’t even have an official Post Office – there’s no way a telegram could have reached her there so quickly.”

Mac looked taken aback for a moment but rallied. There must be a sensible explanation for this.

“Did you send her anything there?”

“Yes. The second telegram, the one there is no evidence she received. The woman at the office told me it would be dispatched with urgency and neglected to mention that it would need a courier to get it that far. I went to inquire about that today and was told that no-one matching her description has ever worked there as far as they know, although a woman called Alice Dovedale, who was there to collect her pension, claimed to remember her.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile.

“According to Mrs Dovedale, a young ‘flibertigibit’ wearing red lipstick had been behind the counter on the day in question, but refused her service, claiming to be guarding the Post Office from a horde of rampaging possums.” He raised two sardonic eyebrows and turned down the corners of his mouth. “Apparently, the woman’s name was Dr Jane Smith – which could give us something to go on if it’s a real name, although I have my doubts about that.”

He scowled down at his notes, as if the evidence was an uncooperative witness who could be intimidated into making more sense.

“There were also several sightings of a woman matching the same description out of state.” He began to read from his notebook. “A short, blonde woman in her 20s, wearing red, described as ‘some city woman’ in Oodnaddata, ‘another fancy piece’ in Harts Range and ‘a society lady’ in Darwin.  She, or several women who looked and dressed alike, visited each of the hotels Miss Fisher and her father stayed at and dropped off messages for her, although there’s no evidence she ever saw either of them face to face.”

“Your messages? So, what does that mean? There was some conspiracy of blonde women to promptly deliver your love letters without you knowing? That’s insane and I don’t see what it has to do with Henry Fisher and his supposed plan to gain access to Phryne’s money.”

“It may not have been my messages, or not just mine. There was a telegram on the 6th to Oodnaddata, delivered before I sent this one.” He waved the appropriate slip of paper. “The hotel clerk remembers the mystery woman dropping it off. She was also seen at Darwin airfield by a man who identified Miss Fisher and her father as having used the airfield but couldn’t remember where they went. He noticed that the blonde woman was wearing a flight scarf, so we could be looking for an aviatrix – which might explain how she could deliver our letters so quickly but gets us no further on why. The flight records which should have been logged are missing for that entire day, so there’s no way to double check the name or Miss Fisher’s intended destination.”  

“I think I need another drink.” Mac refilled their glasses and considered the problem, waiting until Jack had knocked back two measures before she responded.

“Perhaps Phryne hired a private courier?”

He made to interrupt her but she held up a hand to stop him.

“You haven’t found any proof that she’s alive?”

“No.”

He didn’t believe she was dead though, evidence or not. Mac could see his abject denial written solid in every line of his face. He wasn’t going to give this up, not if he could help it. Setting the unanswered questions they still had about Phryne’s disappearance aside, she was no longer sure it was in his best interests to continue this investigation. He was too close to this case, and the toll it was taking looked like it was close to breaking him in two.

He accepted another drink and tipped it back. His voice was ragged, slightly slurred but still articulate.

“You’re forgetting her father, who may have forced her to change her plans. The woman I saw at the Post Office sounded English, maybe there’s some connection with her family.” Even to his ears it sounded feeble when he said it out loud.

“When has Phryne Fisher ever allowed anyone to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do?”

“If the Baron has her mixed up in something illegal she might want to protect us – protect me – from having to arrest him, or her for that matter.”

“How uncharacteristically considerate of her.” Mac picked up the folder and flicked through it, locating the superseded copy of Phryne’s will which had still not been returned to her solicitor.

“I take it you’ve read this.”

He nodded curtly. “She updated it when she adopted Jane and there were one or two minor amendments since. Nothing to link to her disappearance. The only relevant information is in the current version.”

“I presume those minor amendments included her bequest to you?”

Ignoring his look of surprise, Mac read the section aloud.

_“To Jack Robinson I leave all the remaining scotch in my cellar and my crystal decanter and glasses, in the hope that he retains fond memories of our nightcaps and stimulating conversations.”_

Mac rolled her eyes. Honestly Phryne, still flirting with the poor man from beyond the grave, it was appalling.

Jack’s eyes had darkened, his voice when he spoke barely concealed his anger.

“Your point, Doctor MacMillan?”

‘I had a conversation with Dot over Christmas. Apparently, after the business with Gertie Haynes, when you weren’t speaking to her, Phryne got outrageously drunk and attempted to disinherit you of your whiskey. As it was 1am and she was by that point to unstable to stand, let alone break into her solicitor’s office, she satisfied herself with drinking as much of it as she could and writing a P.S. to that note. Dot didn’t think she remembered doing it in the morning so it’s sat at the back of her bureau ever since.”

Dr Mac pulled out a blank unsealed envelope containing a single piece of paper.

“I know you don’t want to hear this Jack, but if you won’t listen to me, perhaps you will listen to her.”                

He took the proffered envelope and unfolded the paper inside. The writing was sloppy and at a strange angle to the page, but still recognisable as Phryne’s hand. There was a smudge on one side which could have been a tear stain or just the excesses of alcohol undermining the usual elegance of her handwriting.

_‘Also, Jack, please remember that you are NOT MARK-SODDING-ANTHONY! Marvellous as I undoubtedly was, I think you will find me perfectly survivable.’_

Jack made a noise, somewhere between a dry sob and an ironic chuckle, choked on the last of his drink and burst into a mad, uncontrollable laughter, a high pitched unnatural cackle borne of suppressed grief. It was a horrible sound.

Mac had been prepared for tears, in a perverse way that had been part of her plan. She was a doctor, not a psychiatrist, but she knew enough to know he was not in a healthy state of mind. She had seen enough people grieve that this response should not have come as the surprise it did. However, she _was_ a doctor and she knew the remedy. She hauled off and slapped him hard across the face. She was feeling fairly tipsy at this point and seeing Jack Robinson crack like that was not at all a reassuring experience, especially whilst her own grief for her friend was still so raw. His wide-eyed look of shock as his manic cackling sobs stopped abruptly was something of a relief.

“So, what now Inspector?” Mac asked to cover the unpleasant silence.

He wiped his face in a handkerchief, wrenching his expression back to something approaching normal and tamping down the hurt that had come so close to spilling over into catharsis.

“Now. We try to track down this mysterious Dr Jane Smith who has apparently been following Miss Fisher across the country.”

Mac sighed and shook her head.

“Jack, you have to at least entertain the possibility that she’s not coming back. You can’t investigate this case with any degree of objectivity. Unless you can at least admit that she _might_ be dead, I can’t help you.”

He looked at her as if she’d punched him in the gut, his haunted eyes disbelieving at her betrayal, of him and of Phryne.

“You won’t help?”

“This is me helping.”

The Inspector’s face shut down entirely. He rose unsteadily to his feet, gathered up the papers from the case file, as well as his hat and coat, and left the flat without a word.

“Well.” Mac remarked dryly to the empty room. “That could have gone better.”  


	6. Into the Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst the Doctor goes into battle with the Sycorax ship, Phryne, haunted by guilt over her father's death, must try to find away to survive on the island where she has crash landed.

The Doctor watched the tiny plane dwindle out of sight on the view screen and hoped fervently that the occupants would make it to the nearby island. He could have tried to get them to jump through the open door of the TARDIS, but he was at this point somewhat less certain about his survival than theirs. In addition to the ship which appeared to have a malfunctioning time drive, the Sycorax had managed to steal a Temporal Oscillator - a device for detaining prisoners by trapping them in a short time loop. They did not appear to know how to work it properly, and in the wrong hands the technology could do a great deal of damage.

Ramming the ship away from 1938 may have stopped them from ripping time apart all across this region of space, but they were still playing merry hell with the temporal fabric throughout 1929 and through to the beginning of 1930. The damage was making the controls of the already hobbled TARDIS fizz and pop alarmingly, warning lights and buzzers (which he should really have disabled by now) were disco dancing across the more mundane of his senses. Small fires were erupting all over the control room and the Doctor whipped off his now quite wrecked tuxedo jacket and used it to put out the nearest one. There was white ash across the dark skin of his cheek and his close cropped wiry curls were shiny with sweat. He wished again that there was someone else there so he could convince them that he had a better plan for this than ‘just wing it’, it always made him feel better when he did and the situation at this point was getting too serious for a monologue.

Aside from opportunism, pique, and vengeance, there was only one reason why the Sycorax would take a hostage in the form of a Gypsy Moth from the first half of 20th Century Earth and it wasn’t because of the retro chic. This was a trap for the Doctor – as if they doubted he would come after them. Why did no-one ever seem to learn how bad a plan it was to set those? If this little band of bandits were experimenting with time technology, they probably they wanted the TARDIS too. That wouldn’t happen. He would destroy both of them before he let the Sycorax take her. Flicking switches and murmuring a reassuring “steady Old Girl” to the panicking ship, he hovered over a large red button – this better damn well work – his hand slammed down. A split second before it hit, the Sycorax ship fired.

The shockwave knocked him off balance and the console began to hum an ominous note before cracking out a wave of energy which hit him square in the chest. His last words before light of regeneration spread golden bright from his face and limbs were:

“Bollocks! Not again!”

It was mercifully quick this time. The Doctor straitened unfamiliar limbs and looked down. Not as far down as before it seemed. Hmm. This was new. She grinned a broad smile and a filthy chuckle rose up from deep within her chest. No matter how long you spent in the universe it always had something new to surprise you with.

Staggering inelegantly in trousers intended for a man nearly a foot and a half taller than her, and slipping small feet out of large shoes, she tightened the belt around her waist and rolled up the cuffs of her sleeves.

“That’s quite enough of that,” she said decisively, and smacked the red button.

Outside, a trembling golden sphere of distortion appeared around the Sycorax ship; a blast from its guns merely reverberated off the shimmering surface and rebounded back to its hull, leaving a deep gash which vented plasma. Slowly and remorselessly the sphere began to shrink, taking the ship with it. When it reached the size of a tennis ball the Doctor threw open the TARDIS doors and swiped the golden sphere out of the air, tossing it from hand to hand with the same ease as her former self. Her new face was grinning; this wasn’t the _most_ fun you could have with miniaturisation, but it definitely made the top three.

She threw the ball containing the errant ship into a drawer along the wall of the console room and slammed it shut yelling, “And you can stay in there and think about what you’ve done!” with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, but it had been a difficult day.

The interior of the TARDIS was still a wreck – she was going to have to make repairs, possibly change the desktop again. Time to land.

“Now,” she wondered aloud. “Whatever happened to that bi-plane?”

 

 

Phryne sat on the ground by the plane for a long time, shaking with sobs, barely seeing her surroundings, the pain and the madness of it all washing over her. The sky above was growing darker, freckling with early stars. Trembling, she finally got to her feet and steadied herself. Her father was dead, she could do nothing to help him now. She, on the other hand, would need food, water and shelter if she was going to survive here long enough to get back home. She had to get home. Focus on that.

First though, there was something she had to do.

She made a makeshift stretcher from a section of the plane’s wing which had been ripped off during the crash and tied her father’s body to it with strips of cloth, torn from her tattered blouse. Dragging him up above the tideline into the dunes, she used a smaller scrap of metal to dig the grave, covering it over with sand. She did not grieve as she had when they found her sister Janey’s body, did not sink to her knees and weep. Instead, she reached up to her scarf where the now slightly battered swallow pin was still fixed in place and gripped it tightly, the sharp edges of the metal cutting into her fingers till they drew blood.

She took a deep breath and a long draught from the hipflask of whiskey which had fallen from her father’s coat as she dragged him from the beach. With this silent toast complete, she turned away. Water, food, shelter, escape. That was the plan. Whoever or whatever had spoken to her out of that spinning police box looked to be in a lot of trouble and Phryne Fisher had never once in her life sat about, waiting for a man to rescue her. She was not about to start now. Besides, if whoever this ‘Doctor’ was decided to turn up, she was going to have some serious questions for him. His confidence as he spoke to her out of the air had bordered on arrogance and whilst she did not necessarily object, she felt he had her at enough of a disadvantage as it was.

Returning to the wreck of the plane Phryne retrieved her luggage, including a box of provisions intended for the day’s flight and some emergency supplies, packed in case of an unexpected landing in inhospitable terrain. There were tools in there which she would need, and enough food for few days if she was careful; she needed to get anything potentially useful out of the way of the tide before it came in. By the time the moon rose she had made a makeshift camp in the dunes by wedging a section of the plane’s undercarriage between a rock and the stump of a tree (no easy feat when all you have to see by is starlight, but Phryne was blessed with excellent night vision). Not having the energy for much else, she forced herself to ignore the anxious nausea gripping her stomach and eat a little of the food recovered from the plane, then huddled herself under as much clothing as she could and drifted off into an exhausted sleep.

When she woke, it was morning, the bright sunlight revealing a landscape of white sand, palm trees, and tropical forests which stretched up the beach towards low cliffs of dark rock. She rose stiff and aching from her bivouac and considered her options. She would need to find a source of fresh water, that was the most immediate problem. She stubbornly refused to look towards the dune where her father’s body lay, refused to think about the fact that she had lost him just as they had been tentatively beginning to heal old wounds. She refused, somewhat less successfully, to let her mind wander to the people she had left behind in Melbourne, and what her disappearance would mean to them when it became known. Her daughter Jane, her young life already marked by loss, would be devastated, and Dot, Mac, all of her friends.

Unbidden, Jack’s voice trailed through her mind; this was not the first time he had thought her dead. There had been a car crash, a garbled message.

_‘When I thought it was you, in that car. I found it unbearable.’_

No. She could not afford to think about that. Don’t dwell on what you can’t solve. Live in the moment. Find joy in all the dark places. That was how to survive and she _would_ survive. Her unshakable faith in her own invincibility was part of what made her Phryne Fisher. Accordingly, she stripped herself naked and ran the full length of the beach, diving into the clear blue water and luxuriating in the soft foam of the waves as they broke upon the shore.

The salt water stung the cuts and grazes from the crash even as it cleaned them, and she couldn’t stay in the water long. Returning to the beach, she shook herself off, letting her body dry in the heat as much as possible and wiping the excess seawater off with the remains of the blouse she had used for the stretcher. Rummaging in her bedding pile, she found some relatively clean clothes and wrapped her flight scarf around her hair to keep the hot sun off her head, pinning it firmly into place with her swallow broach. Collecting her pistol from her luggage in case of any surprises, she set off to discover what the island boasted in terms of food, water, or native inhabitants.

It wasn’t long before she found at least a partial solution to her provisions problem. There were groves of mango and papaya not far from the shore, and a little further she found a running stream which seemed reasonably safe to drink from, although she should probably boil the water first. What there was no sign of, even after she had circumnavigated the whole of the tiny island, was any indication that another human being had ever set foot on the place. Her scarf slung over her arm and bulging with ripe fruit, Phryne returned to her little camp and set about building a fire of dried grass and dead wood, before sitting down to eat her meal and face her second night as a castaway.

 

 

The island was a gorgeous prison, a paradise from which she could not escape. Once her basic needs had been met and she could no longer focus on them, Phryne found herself trapped and alone with her own thoughts. They were no longer good company. Crippling waves of inescapable guilt at her father’s death threatened to drown her entirely whenever she thought of him. What had she been thinking? It’s not like he had even wanted to come, he hated flying. She cried for him and for the second chance that had been taken from them. She cried for her mother, who had now lost her husband and both her daughters. The agony of uncertainty which had followed Janey’s disappearance would now be cruelly reprised, until Phryne could escape to bring her the solace of her own survival and the bitter resolution of her father’s passing. If she could escape. Her tears brought her no relief, just left her shaken and weak, huddled from the torrential rain under her makeshift shelter. Her fire had gone out and with the rain, everything was too wet to start another; she shivered despite the heat and hugged her knees.

The daily downpours kept her trapped both literally and figuratively. At first, she tried to dance in the warm tropical rain, but found that her attempts to glory in the situation grew quickly stale. The forest was slippery and dangerous to explore, full of hidden drops and harbouring spiders. Unable to distract herself with exploration, Phryne was left to flit between impotent rage at her own stupidity for getting herself into this mess, and agonising circular arguments in her head about what had actually happened between here and Darwin.

There had been what looked very much like an alien space craft. That was patently ridiculous. Utterly insane. And yet she had no other explanation for what it could have been. As to the voice in the blue police box - that went beyond ridiculous and into the comically surreal. Was the man attached to some kind of alien police force? If he was good looking too perhaps Jack would have some competition after all! She tried to smile at the thought but wasn’t very successful. Jack was out there but unreachable, and once the news of her disappearance found him, he would be in terrible pain of her causing. Again. Thinking of him was not exactly a source of comfort. Would he try to find her? She hated herself a little more for hoping that he would.

Phryne considered the possibility that she had gone mad, but not very seriously. Even in the midst of grief she was still Phryne Fisher; she knew who she was, she trusted her senses and her own judgement. She had seen impossible things and could not think of a way they could have been faked, or a reason why anyone would try. That could only mean that they were not, in fact, impossible. If her own universe of possibilities had not shrunk at that point to a damp little shelter under warm rain this would have thrilled her. As it was, it was just one more frustrating mystery she could not solve to her own satisfaction.

For something to do, and although she knew it would probably make her feel worse, she took to re-reading Jack’s letter to her. It was the only thing she had to read, the book she had brought with her had either been lost in the crash or left back in Darwin, she wasn’t sure which. In the tumult of emotion that raged within her captive soul, she fixated on his words, reading worlds into every sentence – many contradictory and probably imagined. The romantic portion of their relationship had for so long been conducted almost exclusively in subtext, opening the door to myriad interpretations. That had been part of the fun, a cardless poker game played for pieces of each other’s hearts. Phryne hated poker (probably because she never lost), how had she allowed him to raise the stakes so high? She started to let herself dwell on fears she thought she had overcome. Of the suffocation that could come with a man’s love, and the vulnerability that came through loving someone. Had this whole reckless adventure just been a way to run away? She hadn’t thought so, had thought this mystery solved, even if they were still waiting to meet for the denouement. Could she be that much of a coward?

She raked the letter again, this time catching sight of the P.S. – the implication that she, or someone acting under her instructions, had broken into somewhere. The mention of Mr Butler (who had details of her flight path) had made her think it might have something to do with Jack’s uncanny ability to find her, even in Harts Range where she had no intention of being. She had also suspected that her father could have cast some light on the problem if he had been so inclined. Another secret he had taken to his grave.

Cursing herself for her own sentimentality, she rummaged in the envelope for the telegrams Jack had sent. She wanted the one from Harts Range:

_Patagonia sounds inspiring STOP I love you STOP Letter to follow_

She drew out his first telegram, the one she had received the day she left and stopped. The date was wrong. It was dated September 7th but she had received it September 6th. That was strange, obviously an error of course but…she had had some experience lately of time failing to live up to its responsibilities as a universal constant. It piqued her interest, a welcome relief from the dull monotony of guilt and self-doubt which was frankly beginning to bore her. She checked the rest of his correspondence. There was no post mark on the letter. Now she came to think about it, all of his messages had got to her unusually fast, in addition to the serious improbability of them finding her at all. She hadn’t properly questioned it before, but how the hell could a telegram have even arrived in Harts Range? The place was barely more than a few shacks and a local watering hole that doubled as a guest house. There was no Post Office there she was sure of it, someone would have had to have travelled from another town and she had flown over the area – civilisation, at least of the sort that sent telegrams, was at a minimum in the region.

It was an unsolvable puzzle unless you factored in the possibility that something impossible had happened. Something had gone wrong with time. What was it the man in the police box – the Doctor, he had called himself – had said? That they were stuck in a temporal loop. That stop and start with the refilling fuel gauge which had them flying across the sea in a straight line for hours, long after they should have seen land. How long had time been an unreliable ally? If that question even made sense. For the first time in days she glanced voluntarily up towards the dunes where she had buried the body of Henry Fisher. Perhaps, if the Doctor came back, there would be a way to fix this after all. Phryne had always seen the laws of the land as suggestions to be worked around; recent events had presented her with the glorious possibility that the laws of physics could be similarly pliable. If the Doctor did come to find her, it was a theory she was willing to put to the test.

 

 

The Doctor finally located the crash site in February 1930 – nearly six months away from when the plane and its occupants had entered the temporal loop. From the look of the wreckage, the time differential was down to the damage the wretched Sycorax had wrought to the time-stream, rather than because the Doctor had shown up fashionably late. A few days, a week at most since the plane had come down, she judged. The deep furrow ploughed into the beach had not yet been completely eroded by the tide or the tropical rains that would hit at least once a day at this time of year. This was good. It increased the chance that one or both of the erstwhile hostages would still be alive.

Stepping out onto the sand, she set the TARDIS to self-repair and examined the damage. Drag marks, just above the tide line, drag marks and footprints leading too…oh no. There was a shallow grave towards the top of the dune, apparently dug with a makeshift spade fashioned from part of the gutted plane. At least one of them was dead. ‘Not the most auspicious start to a new me.’ She thought. ‘ _I hope you aren’t planning on passing the buck lady_.’ Whispered a recent echo of herself. She gave a delicate cough and a puff of golden smoke drifted off and dissipated in the evening air.

“Don’t move!”

The shout came from behind her. A dark-haired woman in grubby flight gear was perched elegantly in the lower branches of a tree, levelling an _honest to gods_ golden pistol at her. Half a dozen of the Doctor’s previous regenerations suggested chat up lines, each one more terrible than the last. She ignored them, smiled, and held up her hands.

“It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt you.”

It was usually a good line to start with when someone was pointing a gun at you. The woman in the tree, however, appeared unimpressed.

“Undoubtedly, since I’m the one with the gun. Who are you? You arrived in that police box, what happened to the man, the one who flew to my rescue?”

‘OK,’ the Doctor thought, ‘do not attempt to explain regeneration to the angry woman with a gun, you do not want to go through two faces in a day, that would just be embarrassing. Take it slowly, build trust.’ She let a face she had never seen fall into what she hoped was an expression of ‘pain I am unsuccessfully trying to hide from you’.

“He didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry.” The woman’s voice shook slightly but the hand on her gun remained perfectly steady. “Were you close?”

“You could say that. I’m sorry too, about your friend.” The Doctor gestured to the grave at her feet.

“My father.” The woman clenched her jaw tighter at these words and her eyes narrowed. She cocked the pistol.

“What happened to the things that killed him?”

“People, not things, just not very nice people. I dealt with them. I promise they won’t hurt anyone else.”

“Good.” The woman appeared to reach a decision. Slowly she lowered her weapon and slipped gracefully out of the tree, disturbing a little puff of sand. She un-cocked her pistol and slipped it into the waistband of her trousers, strode over to the doctor and extended an elegant hand.

“Phryne Fisher, Lady Detective.”

The Doctor hesitated for a fraction of a second before deciding to lie a little. “Doctor Jane Smith, most people just call me the Doctor. Can I offer you a lift?”

The look Phryne gave her was one the Doctor couldn’t quite place, a sadness maybe, or nostalgia, gone as soon as it surfaced. It was replaced almost at once by a potent mixture of excitement, intrigue and lingering suspicion.

“Yes Doctor, and thank you. But first, I think you have some explaining to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on regeneration and Doctor Who cannon for the uninitiated.
> 
> Regeneration was introduced back in the early days of the show in the 1960s when illness forced William Hartnell, who played the first Doctor to retire. It allows the show to swap in new actors who keep the core of the role - the Doctor is basically a force for good, who saves people, mostly from alien menaces - but with variations of aesthetic and personality. We didn't get to know the first Doctor in this story that well, but I think of him as being a very charming, flirtatious, action first thinking second, kind of Doctor. The new Doctor, well she's still getting to know herself, and isn't quite sure yet what kind of woman she's going to be. It's left deliberately ambiguous in cannon whether the Doctor is supposed to have been female at any point but they have never had a woman play the character so for the purposes of this AU, this is the first time that the Doctor (who is basically older than God) has been female. And who better to teach her about the power of the feminine than Phryne Fisher?
> 
> The name Jane Smith is me gender swapping another little aspect of Dr Who cannon. When the Doctor wants to pass as human he calls himself John Smith, his real name being something of a mystery. The idea of having the female Doctor use the name Jane, seemed consistent and also works well with the Miss Fisher cannon.


	7. Brave New Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne makes a new friend and an important decision.

Phryne gestured in the direction of her makeshift camp, she did not like to linger long by her father’s grave. She needed to be calm, logical, to not be swept up in the maelstrom of emotion which threatened to engulf her. The most dangerous part was the hope, the possibility that through this woman she could somehow put things right. The mysterious Dr Smith flashed her a bright little smile and strolled off in the direction Phryne indicated. She had an easy confidence and complete absence of fear which were somehow reassuring. Or maybe it was the name Jane. It always felt like provenance whenever she heard her sister’s name, although it was common enough and Phryne knew logically it was just coincidence.

Doctor Smith’s body language was at odds with her very strange appearance. She was dressed in what appeared to be the tattered remnants of a man’s tuxedo, much too large for her, belted (who wore a belt with evening dress?) and with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows. Her feet were bare and the bottoms of the trousers appeared to have been roughly hacked off – presumably to prevent her tripping over them. She was shorter than Phryne by several inches, not much over 5ft tall, with a ripple of golden hair which reached down past her waist and stuck up at odd angles where she had tucked it behind her ears. Her eyes were large and her face without make-up, giving her the air of a small child swimming in her father’s clothes. Her voice, however, held a tone, not of command but of authority well beyond her years, which looked to be in her mid-20s. The clouds - which had abated in their near perpetual downpour for a blessed hour - were darkening again and in the soft, rain-washed light of the tropics the woman _glowed_. Literally. A faint golden shimmer crackled over her skin, and periodically she exhaled a breath of glittering golden smoke which shimmered and shifted its way up towards the gathering storm.

The nearest thing Phryne had ever seen to this was a man who had been poisoned with a radioactive compound, it had made his corpse glow with a pale blue light in the chill dark of the morgue. She somehow did not believe that was the case here. The woman looked perfectly healthy, ethereal even; if Dot had been here, she might have thought her an angel. Phryne doubted that too. She did not discount the supernatural as a possibility (although she maintained a healthy scepticism on that front), but she was convinced that, if they existed, angels would be more elegantly attired, assuming they wore anything at all.

“So Doctor, you can start by telling me who exactly you are and what happened out there.” She gestured out over the sea towards the point she had last seen the strange blue box Dr Smith had arrived in, brazenly violating every law of aerodynamics as it spun through the sky.

The Doctor turned and scrutinised Phryne with eyes the ominous grey of an oncoming storm; they seemed to strip her bare and sent a shiver through her soul, whether of fear or excitement she wasn’t quite sure.

What _was_ she?

“What do you think happened?” The Doctor asked. There was a curious expectancy and challenge in her tone, as if underneath the innocent question were others. ‘Just how good are you? Have you worked it out _Lady Detective_?’ Phryne’s first instinct was to respond that _she_ was asking the questions, but somehow the riposte never came out. Miss Fisher never could resist a challenge.

“I think I…we…were abducted, by aliens and somehow they did something to time. We were out over the sea far too long, and your friend, he mentioned something about a temporal loop.”

It was, without question, the most ridiculous theory she had ever uttered out loud and she prided herself on her refusal to take life seriously. The Doctor however, was regarding her with the smile of a teacher impressed by an especially bright pupil.

“Full marks! I am impressed!”

“Well I’m very impressive. Now start talking.”

The Doctor looked at her intently for a few seconds. Her large, storm-grey eyes were disconcerting when viewed at close range. The childlike quality Phryne had observed from a distance vanished, and she felt a chill creep up her spine. They were ancient eyes; the death of worlds and the birth of stars sparkled in their depths, there was kindness there and pain and a loneliness beyond anything Phryne had ever seen. She felt trapped in that gaze, unable to break away, it was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure and she found herself asking again _what was_ this woman? All Phryne’s instincts were insisting she could not be human.

“The people who kidnapped you,” the Doctor continued in a matter of fact voice, “are from a race called the Sycorax.”

“Sycorax?” Phryne interrupted. The word was familiar but she couldn’t immediately place it and it took a moment for her mind to conjure up the source. “That’s from Shakespeare isn’t it, she’s the witch from The Tempest?”

Phryne glanced around at the deserted island on which she had been effectively marooned, thinking ruefully _‘O brave new world, that has such people in’t’_ and had a fleeting image of Jack’s expression at the thought of her as the virginial Miranda, catching her first glimpse of a group of beautiful young men, fresh from a shipwreck. Her lips twitched as she fought down an ironic grin.

“How marvellously apt.”

“I thought you wanted to hear this story?”

“Sorry Doctor, please continue.”

“The Sycorax are scavengers, they steal technology from the worlds they conquer. This lot had stolen some time travel technology and then got greedy, decided to go after more. They abducted you in the hope of luring me and my ship into a trap. Not a wise move.” The Doctor’s smile was satisfied and somehow a little frightening. More frightening than a face with dimples had any right to be.

“Are you implying that that police box can travel through time?” Phryne kept her voice as incredulous as she could make it, but part of her was desperately hoping it was true, that she could somehow fix her mistake in leaving Melbourne, that she could bring her father back.

“Time and space. She’s called the TARDIS by the way.”

“You have to admit that’s hardly easy to believe.”

The Doctor grinned at her, the broad, unaffected smile of someone who could see right through her façade.

“You do though. Funny how that happens. I must have a trustworthy face.”

‘Not that I’ve seen it yet.’ She thought to herself.

“How about I show you?”

She was still grinning that infuriating grin, Phryne managed with an effort not to rise to it.  

“If you insist. As I said, I could use a lift back to Melbourne.”

“Better grab your stuff. There’s a whole universe waiting for us if you want to see it? I’m sure Melbourne’s not going to go anywhere. Besides, if it does I’ll probably be called in to bring it back.”

That grin again. As if there was no way in the world she could refuse. Phryne normally had no patience at all with people who acted as if she didn’t know her own mind, but there was something about this woman, an irresistible energy that had her caught up in her wake. The part of Phryne’s inner monologue that often spoke in Jack’s voice muttered ‘ _Getting a taste of your own medicine Miss Fisher?_ ’ She ignored it and busied herself packing up her makeshift camp.

As she was doing this, the Doctor fished a metal wand from inside the pocket of her oversized trousers. It looked like it was made of beaten bronze, around eight inches long with a coiled head and a blue light at the top. As she pointed it at Phryne, it began to emit a modulated high-pitched wail before the Doctor held it close to her face and twisted it. The noises changed in pitch, growing higher and more insistent as the end extended and the light began to flash. The Doctor frowned; this wasn’t good at all. In fact, she hadn’t really needed the sonic for conformation. Any Time Lord – or Lady, that was going to take some getting used to – could have seen it. Phryne’s timeline was distorted, puckered and damaged. Too much life scrunched up into too little time, pock marked with the improbable and the near impossible. Oddly though, it still seemed to be holding together and relatively stable; hopefully the damage to her past wasn’t going to disturb her present.

Phryne was looking at her with a curious expression.

“Sonic screwdriver.” The Doctor answered her unasked question. “It’s like a bit like a Swiss Army Knife but with a lot more attachments and it’s useless for stabbing people with. Oh, and it’s not much good with wood. I’ve never got around to sorting that out, you know how it is, invasion of killer robots, secret lizard army, unanticipated apocalypse – these things slip to the bottom of the to do list.”

“You don’t make the universe sound like an especially hospitable place, Doctor.”

“You’re going to come anyway.”

“Perhaps. I haven’t said I believe you yet.”

“Ah, but you do and you will. I know your type.”

“My type? What type is that exactly?”

“You were flying a tiny, rusty, open top plane over open water even before you were accosted by a hostile alien race. You ‘Phryne Fisher, Lady Detective’ are one of those people who are inexorably drawn to trouble. So am I, that’s how I know the type. And I’m offering you more trouble than you can find anywhere on this planet. There’s no way you can possibly refuse.”

“Trouble usually finds me.”

“Even better.”

Phryne had a moment of indecision. She knew there were people who needed her. She had to deal with her father’s death, try to persuade this Dr Smith to undo it if she could. Something told her that was unlikely to be a simple proposition. Then there was her mother, her friends who would be worried about her, and Jack. Jack. Somehow, the world where she had kissed a man she loved who had never been her lover, on an airstrip in the early morning light, seemed very far away, and in front of her the universe was spread out like a feast, ready to be devoured.

“He’ll keep, you know.” The Doctor was watching her with an annoyingly knowing expression.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Phryne’s voice rose in pitch, the way it always did when a lie was too big to hide.

“Whoever gave you that badge you keep fondling. Could be a she of course, I shouldn’t presume.”

“It was a gift from...a…close friend. I…imagine he’ll be worried about me.”

This was not something that normally troubled her when the possibility of adventure was afoot, and it irked her a little that it bothered her now.

“We can always go pick him up if you like.”

“I don’t think your ship looks big enough for three, Doctor.”

The Doctor flashed a broad grin of pure mischief.

“Wait and see.”

Phryne looked up towards the dunes where her father was buried and felt the clammy weight of guilt, which had been momentarily displaced by the arrival of the Doctor and her wild promises, return with a vengeance.

“Can you do anything? You said you could travel in time, could you save him?” She hated the childish plea in her voice.

“No.” The Doctor’s voice was gentle but firm. “Not without risking more than just your safety. The Sycorax nearly destroyed the fabric of time in this part of space. I won’t risk damaging it further.”

Phryne nodded mutely. She didn’t understand enough of what was happening to argue yet. Besides, it had been a foolish hope. Even in the midst of the impossible, some things could not be changed. She would just have to live with it, it wouldn’t be the first death on her conscience; she had let her sister die, kidnapped and murdered by a madman, after all. Perhaps this should serve to remind her that those she loved were often safer if she left them well alone. Wordlessly, she shouldered the bag containing the things she intended to take with her; her clothes and toiletries, a few tools and oddments from the emergency landing kit, Jack’s correspondence and a child’s toy badge that was worth more to her than all the jewels on earth. The Doctor followed as she stumped up the hill to bid her father a last goodbye.   

This time she did cry as she stood over the grave. Great wracking sobs which she could not force down or push away. The Doctor stood to the side, awkward in the face of her companion’s grief, not knowing how to comfort a stranger when she herself was still unsure of the woman she had so recently become. Very few of her regenerations had had much skill with comforting people. They had tended to offer excitement, adventure and (more often than not) danger as recompense for loss. This difficulty with empathy was one of the many reasons the Doctor knew she should avoid traveling alone. When you have a child watching you in awe (and the rest of the universe mostly counted as children at this point – gods, how old _was_ she? She’d honestly lost count centuries ago) you had to at least try to pat them on the shoulder when the darkness descended.

Extracting the sonic screwdriver, she swept it in a smooth motion along the space where the sand hid Henry Fisher’s body.

“He didn’t die in the crash Phryne,” she lied.

Phryne looked up at her with red rimmed eyes.

“He had a heart attack, hardly surprising given what you were exposed to. I’m amazed either of you survived it. There was nothing you could have done.” The lie was the best she could think of for comfort. Children, after all, need to be lied to sometimes, the universe could be a cruel place and no-one knew that better than the Doctor.

Phryne realised then, standing over her father’s grave, she would have to go back. To face the people that she loved, to face her mother and tell her that her husband was dead. She would never be able to tell any of them what had really happened. They would never believe her; worse, they might think her mad, that age old method for controlling difficult women. They might never say it, but they would attribute her father’s death to her recklessness and they would be right: if she had never embarked on this foolhardy adventure he would still be alive to infuriate her. It was unworthy cowardice, but she wanted so badly to run as far and fast as she could, to get lost in the universe and never come back. She was fighting hard to regain control but losing, and the Doctor patted her shoulder gingerly, making a mental note that whoever gave Phryne the broach she was now gripping with white knuckles, was going to be joining them even if she had to stage a kidnap. She had no idea what else to say.

Phryne turned to the Doctor with an effort. “Can you take me home?”

“Of course.”

If the Doctor was disappointed by this decision she didn’t show it; instead, she led the way down towards the beach to where the TARDIS was waiting on the hard-packed sand. As soon as Phryne approached it, there was a loud crack and a flash of white light. Phryne was thrown to her back, winded, and the Doctor crowded round, checking her pulse as she scanned her once again with the sonic screwdriver.

“It’s OK, you’re alright. It’s just a temporal discharge. I thought this might happen. You were displaced in time and exposed to a lot of unfiltered temporal energy without a capsule, the machinery the Sycorax were using left a…a kind of residue on you and on the outside of the TARDIS. When you came in contact it caused a reaction, like a static shock.” She looked at the sonic. “You may have aged by six months. Nothing life threatening.”

Phryne’s head was throbbing and she had no idea what the Doctor was talking about but she tried to focus.

“Six months?”

“Yes. It makes sense, you skipped forward in time by six months when you exited the Temporal Oscillator – that’s the time trap they used on your plane - and it just caught up with you in one go. That’s probably going to sting a bit, don’t worry, I’ve got just the thing for it inside. At least I hope I do. I’ve been redecorating. Never mind, it will turn up.”

The Doctor was speaking quickly, in the enthusiastic voice of a person who likes to hear themselves talk, especially when they just worked out something clever, but Phryne barely heard her.           

“So, does everyone think I’ve been missing for six months?” She was horrified. “They’ll all think I’m dead.”

“Well it will be a nice surprise for them when you turn up safe and well then.”

The Doctor made a spirited attempt at a compassionate smile and helped Phryne into a sitting position. Apparently sensing the other woman’s awkwardness in this situation, Phryne visibly pulled herself together and stood up.

“Well Doctor. I need a hot bath and a stiff drink, and as it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting either around here I think it’s time you took me home. Assuming I don’t get struck by lightning a second time.”

The Doctor scanned first Phryne and then the TARDIS with the sonic and shook her head.

“You’ll be fine. Come on, you’re going to love this bit.”

Phryne wasn’t sure what she was expecting; a small cabin perhaps, with seats for pilot and co-pilot, she went automatically to aeroplane controls as a point of reference. Or maybe something like the inside of a submarine – she’d seen one once during the war – a cramped space full of wheels and pistons but stranger and more complex. That was not what she found.

The moment she walked through the narrow blue doors Phryne Fisher realised with a perfect, startling clarity just how completely her world had changed. There was no cramped cockpit, no dials or wheels. Instead she walked into a large and beautiful circular room, far too large to be contained by the outside of the little blue box. The walls were a deep imperial purple decorated with a tessellating honeycomb of fine lines and flourishes of scrollwork in a paler lilac. The floor was a mosaic in marble, shades of deeper purple matching the walls towards the edge growing lighter as they drew towards the centre. In the middle of the concentric circles was a structure of wrought iron, claw footed and crowded as a cathedral roof with gargoyles and chimeras, framed by flowing and swirling waves of black metal and dark flowers. The shape was something like a circular table, but instead of a flat top, the space above waist height was a crowded mass of buttons and levers. Ivory coloured stops like those on a church organ, marked with complex circular symbols jutted out in random clusters – there was even a small piano keyboard tucked away to her left. The layout of this strange instrument was an asymmetrical whimsy without any obvious pattern; in the centre rose a crystal bell jar full of dancing blue and white light which flickered across the walls, rippling shadows across the elegant scrollwork. Hanging above the bell jar was a chandelier, the pale crystals hovering apparently unattached to the iron tangle of thorns and roses which hung from the pale purple ceiling, dangling from the centre of an elaborate pattern of lines and circles contained within a solid hexagon the same colour as the dark walls. There were doors around the walls. Not the square white of the outer doors through which they had entered, but tapered archways framed by polished wood and covered with soft velvet curtains. Heaven alone knew where they led to and the Doctor had been right; there wasn’t a chance in Hell that Phryne could walk away from this extraordinary adventure without further exploration.

The Doctor walked to the centre and patted the console affectionately. “Well done, Old Girl. You have excelled yourself,” she murmured softly.

She looked up at Phryne – this was her favourite part – and saw a face mesmerised with the innocent joy of a child shown a magic trick. She was spinning on the spot trying to take in every aspect of the marvel at once.

“My word, Doctor,” she gasped, somewhat breathless. “You do know how to tempt a girl.”

“What do you say Phryne? All of time and space, any planet any time, any adventure you can imagine and all the ones you never could, even in your wildest dreams - then back home again no later than if I dropped you off right now. It’s your choice of course, but you are _totally_ coming with me.”

Phryne pushed her guilt down as deep as she could and met the Doctor’s knowing smile with a mischievous smirk which spread slowly till it reached her eyes.

“Perhaps just one planet?”


	8. Impossible Women

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in Melbourne, the Inspector is coming under pressure from Phryne's family to close the case on her disappearance. With no Mac to call on, Jack turns to Dot to help him track down the mysterious Dr Jane Smith.

Prudence Stanley was not normally a woman to be trifled with or gainsaid; however, she found herself feeling unusually sympathetic towards the man sitting behind the desk in front of her, despite the fact that he appeared to be doing both. Although it might not be obvious to a casual observer, she suspected that the Inspector was taking the loss of her niece hard. That said, she had a duty to her sister – Phryne’s mother – who needed to be taken care of now she was alone in the world, and this could not happen with Jack Robinson blocking the release of Phryne’s will. He was resisting every attempt at moving the legalities of resolving Phryne’s estate forward, apparently through a misplaced hope that somehow, the Honourable Miss Fisher would suddenly reappear and waltz back into his shabby little office as if nothing had happened.

“I appreciate the efforts you have exerted on this matter Inspector, but really, enough is enough. I think it’s time we all moved on and put this wretched tragedy behind us.”

Jack’s face was a perfect, courteous blank as he answered.

“The investigation is still ongoing, Mrs Stanley. I regret that it’s taking so long, but with the latest outbreak of gang violence to contend with we are short on staff and resources. I assure you we are doing everything we can.”

Mrs Stanley’s eyes narrowed at his evasion; she was neither convinced nor deterred from her purpose. She knew, or at least suspected, that there had been more than a professional relationship between the Inspector and her niece. She had in fact done her level best to discourage it. Given his position, their different statuses in life, and Phryne’s utter disinclination towards marriage, she could hardly see how any attachment between them could lead to anything beyond a scandal and the ruination of a respectable man’s reputation. She was well aware that her _niece’s_ reputation when it came to _l’affaires de coeur_ had been utterly beyond saving. To have it end in such a way though... Despite her somewhat formidable persona, Prudence Stanley had a generous and kindly heart and she was forced to admit it had led her to be somewhat lax when it came to her duties in this matter.

She sighed. “Inspector. I am well aware through my connections on the Hospital Board, that you and Doctor MacMillan have been pursuing this affair and that you have gone far beyond the calls of professional diligence.” Her voice softened slightly as she continued. “I am neither ignorant nor unsympathetic to your _personal interest_ in this case Detective Inspector, but I am afraid I must insist that you release Phryne’s will to her family.” She paused again, her voice wavering for the first time since she had entered his office. “We all need to grieve Inspector, I’m sure you understand.”

“I will do my best to expedite the process Mrs Stanley.” Jack’s voice managed to retain the steady, even tone of a policeman stonewalling a politely obstreperous member of the public, but for a split second his eyes gave him away. There was a well of grief and guilt in there which he couldn’t hide, and she had seen it.

He had long suspected that Phryne’s Aunt did not approve of his somewhat unconventional – and never exactly defined - relationship with her niece. Mrs Stanley was an aristocrat born and wed to wealth and had none of her niece’s modern, scofflaw attitude towards social propriety. (That Phryne’s scofflaw attitude frequently extended to the _actual_ law was a fact he was repeatedly required to tactfully avoid noticing during their investigations). He supposed the elder lady considered him beneath the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, for all the latter’s impoverished upbringing on the streets of Collingwood. It was a suspicion which did not ingratiate her with him.

He had also seen Prudence Stanley’s own experience with grief and denial first hand after the passing of her son Arthur, and the compassion and understanding in her expression right now was much, much worse than her demands, which were – a small part of him had to admit – entirely reasonable. It sparked an irrational anger in him, that and the way she kept repeating his title, as though to draw him back to his duty and away from his quiet crusade to discover what had become of Miss Fisher and why she had left them.

The problem was, the woman was right. Even Mac, who had been his reluctant partner on the case, had finally withdrawn her help, and Hugh and Dot’s inquiries into the Baron’s associates had turned up nothing but dead ends. He had no evidence at all to discount the assertion that Miss Fisher was dead, and yet he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that she was not, and although he could point a shaky finger at the little trail of oddities surrounding her disappearance, he could not honestly explain, even to himself, how it was he knew this. It was intolerable.               

Mrs Stanley was watching him closely and appeared to make a decision.

“My sister has sent a telegram informing me that she will be departing for Melbourne on Tuesday, having finally settled all her affairs in England. The journey is likely to take at least six weeks, by which time Inspector, I expect you to resolve whatever is causing this delay. If not, I will be forced to take steps to ensure that you do.”

“As you wish, Mrs Stanley. Don’t let me keep you.” He would have to interview Margaret Fisher when she arrived in Melbourne, but decided not to labour that point just yet. Prudence Stanley was a powerful woman, there was nothing to be gained by antagonising her further, and implying her sister may have had any involvement in Phryne’s disappearance would certainly do so. Not that Jack really believed Margaret Fisher was responsible, it was simply another thread he had yet to fully pull upon. In the meantime, there was still the question of the elusive Dr Jane Smith, and he had had an idea about how she might be tracked down. It would however, require a certain amount of delicacy.

Bristling at her dismissal but satisfied that she had done her duty by both her sister and her niece, Prudence Stanley swept out of City South Police Station, leaving Jack with a decision to make.

Reluctantly, and although he had sworn to himself that he would not involve her further than necessary, Jack picked up his telephone and asked the operator to connect him to Wardlow, where Constable and Mrs Collins were still living in Phryne’s absence.

“Mrs Collins, it’s Inspector Robinson. I’m afraid I need your help.”

 

 

Dorothy Collins had always enjoyed the kind of adventure stories in which the plucky young heroine triumphed over evil after facing down impossible odds. She especially liked them if there were dragons or fairies involved. Truth be told, she was a little embarrassed by her love of what were, after all, rather silly, childish fantasies. Her fondness for fairy tales wasn’t the worst thing though, the worst thing, the thing she had never knowingly admitted to anyone, was that sometimes, when the tension of a story got too much, she couldn’t resist the urge to flick surreptitiously to the end; just to reassure herself that everything would turn out alright, that good would triumph and the heroine would be safe and live to fight another day.

Real life offered no such reassurances. Ever since she came to work for Miss Fisher, Dot had been captivated by the way the woman effortlessly filled the role of ‘fierce heroine adventuress’ within her own story and the stories of everyone around her. Miss Phryne would never need to flick to the last page to make sure she would be alright because she was always so brave and rarely seemed scared of anything – well, except maybe spiders.

Dot knew she was no Miss Fisher, but she was much less afraid of things than she had once been. She had slowly come to the realisation that the way you become a heroine in your own story wasn’t by never being afraid; but by being afraid, sometimes so afraid that your teeth chatter and your knees don’t want to hold you up, but knowing how to find a space for that fear and doing whatever it was that scared you anyway. Eighteen months of experiencing Miss Phryne’s driving had been more than enough to introduce this lesson, and the practical skills she had learned as a detective working alongside her had gone a long way towards the rest.

Dot hoped against hope that Miss Phryne’s story would still have a happy ending, but the solid core of common sense which ran through her sweet but practical soul told her this was not very likely. You couldn’t expect the world to turn out the way it did in stories. Which didn’t mean that she wouldn’t do anything she could to help if the opportunity arose. That was why, when a somewhat abashed Inspector Robinson had phoned Wardlow to ask for her help, Dorothy Collins had simply said:

“Of course, Inspector. Leave it to me.”

The problem, the Inspector had explained, was this: he had followed Miss Fisher’s trail from Melbourne all the way to Darwin over Christmas, and the only lead he could find was the name ‘Dr Jane Smith’ who he believed to be a wealthy woman, possibly an aviatrix, who may have known Miss Fisher’s father or Miss Fisher herself. He declined to answer when Dot pressed him for more details, but suggested that as leads connected to the Baron had run dry, it might be worth looking through the records at Miss Fisher’s Adventuress’ Club which catered to precisely that kind of woman.

Unfortunately, Dr MacMillan – who was herself a member – had now declined to help them, and there was as yet not enough evidence for a police warrant to search the place, therefore a more surreptitious approach was required. Neither Dot nor the Inspector acknowledged that this might involve Mrs Collins having to bend the rule of law to breaking point if sweetness and cinnamon buns failed to pass muster. Dot was herself rather relived that her husband Hugh was working a night shift that evening, and would therefore not be privy to events until after they had transpired. She tried not to speculate about whether or not Inspector Robinson had arranged this deliberately.

Dot dressed carefully in an unremarkable beige suit and cream blouse, chosen primarily to deflect attention and slipped into Miss Phryne’s room to snatch up her Mistress’ second best set of lock picks, which she hoped fervently she would not have to use. Pausing over the bureau drawer for a second, Dot took out a mouser pistol and the black beret Miss Fisher liked to wear for her more clandestine investigative activities and laid them out in front of the mirror. Blushing a little, she tried the beret on. It looked terrible on her. The cylindrical peak did not suit the soft curves of her face, and the dark colour washed out her normally rosy complexion and clashed with her suit. Smiling a little at herself she replaced both items back in the drawer. Who exactly did she think she was going to shoot on this little adventure anyway? She was not Miss Fisher and she never would be. She was Dorothy Collins and that, all in all, was an excellent person to be. She was just going to make sure she didn’t get caught and if she did, well, at least she knew a few friendly faces down at City South Police Station. She thought about this for a moment, especially about what Hugh would say if forced to arrest his own wife. She _really_ had to make sure she didn’t get caught.

The Adventuress’ Club building was an elegant, modern construction, not more than fifteen minutes’ walk from Wardlow. It housed a bar and dining room, several games rooms, and a small library as well as a comfortable lounge, in which the members could relax and share tales of their daring deeds. These rooms all looked out over a small but very well-appointed garden with an ornamental pond which doubled as a swimming pool in summer – at least it had since Miss Fisher had moved to Melbourne and decided one hot day (and after rather a lot of champagne) that she fancied a dip. The back of the building contained a small kitchen, a powder room and up some stairs on the first floor, several offices in which records of the members and their activities were meticulously filed away – for posterity Phryne had always claimed – as well as the ledgers and account books necessary for keeping the organisation running.

The lights were still spilling warmth and welcome over the garden, along with the crack of billiard balls and the scent of gaspers. Muffled voices and drunken laughter echoed from the front of the building as Dot entered surreptitiously via the kitchens, waving cheerfully to Martha the resident cook, who was preparing something greasy and covered in cheese for whoever was still at the club at 10pm on a weekday evening.

“I was just on my way home from taking Hugh some supper at the station and thought I’d pick up a book Doctor MacMillan recommended. There’s some cinnamon buns still in the basket if you’re feeling hungry,” Dot called out to her brightly, dropping her basket on the side by the window and heading towards the door before Martha could do more than smile hello and nod appreciatively at the thought of buns.

Once through into the hall Dot avoided the library, instead climbing the stairs to the dark offices as quietly as she could. To her consternation they were locked and she was forced to take out her lock picks after all. Well, maybe not entirely to her consternation. Her heart was beating much faster than usual, but it was with excitement as much as fear. Breathing slowly to calm herself down, Dot crossed herself and prayed for forgiveness before inserting the picks and manipulating the internal mechanism of the lock. It was an old one and not very complicated – she had practiced on much harder ones when Miss Phryne had taught her how to do this. In a few seconds, she had the door open and had closed it softly behind her. She moved to draw the curtains before switching the light on so no-one would be able to see in from the outside, reasoning that it was unlikely anyone would notice the light under the door at this hour and it would speed up her search if she didn’t have to use a torch.

The room itself was fairly nondescript: there was a couple of desks, some chairs, a lot of file cabinets and shelves on the walls covered in boxes, neatly labelled with catalogue numbers. Inside the boxes were curios and artefacts discovered by various club members, intended for display or verification, along with newspaper reports of the adventures on which they were collected.

On a shelf behind the desk Dot found what she was looking for – the members register for the Melbourne chapter in the form of a well-thumbed card index in a faded green box. Flicking through the entries until she came to the ‘S’ section, Dot skimmed along, noting a few names she recognised from events she had attended with Miss Phryne but not finding any entry for a Dr Jane Smith. There was a Mrs Jenny Smyth, a Miss Helena Smith and a Miss Anabelle Smith (sisters, apparently), but no Dr Jane of any kind. There were, in fact only three doctors in the entire register: Doctor Elizabeth MacMillan, a Doctor Bernadine Welts, and Doctor Henrietta Frankston. Disappointed but not deterred, Dot made a note of each of the names before turning back to the shelf and replacing the book. She had another idea.

The Inspector had told her that he though Dr Smith might be English, so Dot looked through the bookcase for anything relating to the other chapters of the Adventuress’ Club from different parts of the world. She finally found a far less used register, this time a book bound in red leather - a copy of the register for the sister chapter in London with the members’ names laid out in alphabetical order, alongside information on their membership status and areas of expertise. Some had catalogue numbers which Dot supposed related to the boxes stored up on the shelves around the walls.

This time she struck gold. Very strange gold.

_Dr Jane Smith – Honorary Member 15 th July 1920_

_Science, travel, astronomy, history, general saving of the world._

_Well done Dot, excellent sleuthing! You were right about the hat by the way, yours looks much better on you!_

_Storage Box: D15_              

 

Dot goggled. The entry was in the same faded, greying ink as the ones surrounding it, but unlike them it was in the distinctive handwriting of the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher. But Miss Fisher hadn’t met Dot until 1928; in 1920 Dot had been a young teenager, just entering service, who could never have dreamed of the extraordinary turn her life would take after meeting the Lady Detective. And the hat! She had mentioned the hat – this was just too bizarre.

Dot pulled herself together, deciding the peculiar message must be intended for another Dot; although who and why, and how it could be so strangely apt for her own circumstances, she could not explain. Whatever the explanation, she copied the whole entry into her notebook and began to search the shelves for the box marked D15, finally locating it up near the ceiling. She had to clamber up onto one of the desks to slide it down, along with a spider and a great deal of dust. Really someone should come in and do some tidying up. She made a mental note to make the offer to Doctor Mac the next time she saw her.

Brushing the spider to the floor without concern, Dot lifted the lid of the box and found it full of clippings from various newspapers; there was no real pattern to the stories within. They covered subjects from factory fires, to murder, to exciting new developments in science, and seemed to be from all sorts of places around the world. She couldn’t see a mention of a Doctor Jane Smith in any of them, nor did she find anything of any interest (or at least relevance) until she got to the very bottom of the box. The last clipping wasn’t attached to a story as far as she could see – the text seemed to have been cut off, leaving only the picture and the date. Dot gave an audible gasp, peering at the image in amazement before the sound of the door opening behind her made her spin around in alarm.

“What I would like to know,” said Doctor MacMillan dryly, “is did the Inspector _actually_ put you up to this?”

 

 

Doctor MacMillan strode purposefully into City South, nodding a greeting to Hugh, and marched into Jack’s office, making sure to shut the door behind her. It was nearly 1am and his shift had ended hours ago, but she was unsurprised to see Jack still at his desk, his tie a little loose, head buried in paperwork.

“How would you like your life to get exponentially weirder?” She asked, measuring out two glasses of whiskey and sliding one over to him before sitting down in the vacant chair opposite his desk.

“Doctor MacMillan. If this is about Miss Fisher’s will again it can wait until tomorrow. I’ve heard enough on that subject already today. I had a visit from Mrs Stanley. Your doing I assume?”

Mac wafted the accusation out of the air like an errant moth.

“Only in the sense that I stopped advising her against it. And no, it isn’t about that. This is about you,” and here she lowered her voice so the constable outside would not overhear, “encouraging young Mrs Collins to go poking around at the Adventuress’ Club.”

He looked up at her, face attentive but implacable and waited to hear the worst.

“I found her in a formerly locked office rooting through our paperwork. Apparently, she felt that, as I had decided to stop enabling you in your obstinate denial, a spot of break and enter was more likely to turn up results than just asking if she could have a look.”

Jack closed his eyes and frowned. He had assumed – or at least hoped - that Mrs Collins would have been able to come up with a legal pretext for her investigations, but she had been trained by Phryne Fisher so _of course_ this had always been a possibility. He should have told her explicitly to stay within the law.

Mac was trying unsuccessfully not to smile at his discomfiture, satisfied by his expression that he had at least not intended for Dot to do anything illegal, but not quite willing to let the matter drop just yet.

“She’s not Phryne Jack. You know as well as I do that the Honourable Miss Fisher _bought_ her way out of that kind of trouble as often as not. That’s not an option open to Dot. She can’t afford to get caught like that. It was lucky Martha tipped me off; if someone else had found her snooping around they might have called the police, and how would that have looked for poor Hugh?”

“I’ll do my best to impress that upon her next time I speak to her. I assume you did the same?”

“Yes, and unlike Phryne, she was suitably chastised. She did however, find something…odd, several things in fact, and odder than she realised.”

Jack raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, and Mac gestured with her glass and knocked back her whiskey.

“Have you ever been to England, Inspector?”

Jack’s surprise at the question did not show on his face, nor did the fleeting thoughts of a London reunion with Phryne which was never meant to be, but his voice rose in pitch slightly as he answered.

“No, never got closer than France during the war and it’s a little far for a holiday. Why?”

Mac unfolded a large red ledger full of hand written names and dates, took out an old newspaper clipping, and handed it over.

“There _was_ a Dr Jane Smith on our books, became an honorary member in 1920. This is from one of the umpteen catalogue boxes we had shipped in from the London chapter for one of our members – a history student looking to write a thesis apparently – the catalogue number of the box was there along with a _very_ odd message, which I’ll get to later.” 

Jack took the newspaper clipping from her. It was a photograph of a small group of suffragettes; he could see banners and placards demanding the expansion of the franchise and others emblazoned with the initials of the _National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship_. At the front of the group a woman was apparently being arrested. She was turned towards the camera, wearing a look which could have violated at least six indecency laws without assistance. Even with longer hair and partially hidden under a broad brimmed hat, he could have picked that face out of a crowd of thousands.

“Miss Fisher was a suffragette? I think she may have mentioned it in passing once, but I never knew she was arrested. Not sure how this helps us though, it must be ten years old at least.”

“July 15th 1920 – the same date as our elusive Dr Smith joined the Adventuress’ Club. Keep looking.”

He scrutinised the photograph more carefully and stopped, his mouth actually dropped open in shock as he examined the face of the arresting officer. It was him. Unmistakably his own face. Not the face of his younger self, who would in 1920 have been back in Melbourne with his wife, attempting unsuccessfully to shake off the horrors he had seen at the front. It was his face now, wearing the expression of exasperated amusement which Phryne Fisher was so adept at coaxing out of him. He knocked back his whiskey and failed entirely to come up with a witty retort.

“It gets better,” Mac intoned; apparently, she was enjoying this but he couldn’t for the life of him see why. “You say you weren’t in London in 1920? Well I can guarantee you that Phryne wasn’t either.”

“Still in France?” He asked weakly, he knew Phryne had stayed in France after her ambulance unit was disbanded at the end of the war but thought that she had returned to England in 1919. Hadn’t she been playing Mata Hari with that damned Airforce Captain by then?

“Somerset. When she came back from France she was…not herself for a while. She contracted influenza a few months after I got her home and it nearly killed her. I stayed with her parents and treated her throughout her illness, so I can tell you with absolute certainty that she was not at any rally or demonstration in July 1920. She was convalescent at that point, but could barely take a short walk around the garden without help.”

Jack found his voice and took refuge in sarcasm.    

“So, we should add ‘being in two places at once’ to her already formidable list of accomplishments?”

_Like flying away across Australia whilst simultaneously standing in his living room, battered swallow pin hard against soft silk as he bent to kiss her._ Even after months the memory of that dream was still undimmed, sharp as glass and bittersweet.

“Apparently, it’s a talent you two share. Do you see your mystery telegraph operator in the photograph as well?” Mac asked, forcing him back into the present moment.

Jack took a magnifier from the desk drawer and scrutinised the faces of the other women in the picture, finally lighting on one he recognised. She was wearing a long coat and a cloche with a dark hatband, the black and white photo only hinting at the colour. The outfit seemed anachronistic for so early in the decade, and she looked no younger than she did when reassuring him that his telegram would be dispatched with ‘urgency’.

“This can’t possibly have been taken in 1920. It must have been faked in some way, but why and by whom I can’t imagine. I’ll need to track down the original newspaper for comparison and talk to this history student you mentioned.”

“Almost feels as if someone’s baiting us, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t think it’s her, do you?”

“Phryne Fisher is a lot of things Inspector, but she isn’t cruel. Not intentionally. But...”

Mac flipped open the register of Adventuress’ Club members she was still holding in her hands.

“Someone with her handwriting seems to be watching our investigation intently. Dot thinks it’s her ghost.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Doctor MacMillan.”

“I know. But I’m at a loss for a better explanation. Dot and Phryne only met after Phryne came back to Melbourne. She knows a lot of people, but she’s never mentioned another Dot and the message is so specific.”

Jack read it aloud.

_“Well done Dot, excellent sleuthing! You were right about the hat by the way, yours looks much better!”_

“What hat?” he asked, deciding to focus on the least impossible part of the message as his mind struggled for saner ground.

“Phryne’s black beret. Apparently, Dot tried it on before she left but decided to leave it at home because it didn’t suit her.”

“I’m glad to see her capacity to channel the spirit of Miss Fisher has its limits.”

“Yes, she left the pistol at home as well.”

“Hmm. Well that’s something else to be grateful for. I really should never have encouraged her.”

“Well you won’t be able to keep her out of it now. I only stopped her following me here by promising that she could help Hugh track down some of the women in the photograph in the morning. She’d just keep looking anyway, at least this way we can keep an eye on her.”

“I take it this means you are willing to assist with the investigation again, doctor?” He asked.

“I still don’t think your abject state of denial is useful or healthy, but there is no way I can stay away from this now.”

In the outer office, the telephone began to ring and they heard Hugh pick it up.

“City South Police, Constable Collins speaking.”

There was a clatter as he apparently dropped the phone, retrieved it and stuttered out an incoherent response. A second later he barged through Jack’s office door without knocking, wearing a look of overjoyed incomprehension.

“It’s Miss Fisher Sir! She’s on the telephone!” 


	9. The Art of Diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Phryne is forced to make a choice between justice and vengeance, the Doctor takes her to the Shadow Proclamation, the centre of intergalactic law where they receive some news about the Sycorax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm updating on my tablet for the next few days so expect typos and confusion which I will try to correct when I get home.

The Doctor threw a brass lever, pulled out a few of the stops at apparent (but not actual) random points on the TARDIS console and played a short tune on the miniature keyboard. The console room began to shake and the lights in the bell jar pulsed rhythmically to the groaning of the engines, the hovering crystals in the chandelier dancing along with them. Having always had good sea legs and a natural grace – at least when she didn’t have a man in mind to catch her – Phryne kept her balance but it took a little effort. 

“Where are we going, Doctor?” she asked. 

“Technically not to a planet. I’m taking you to The Shadow Proclamation. I have the Sycorax in custody and I have to turn them in.”  

Phryne nodded slowly and gritted her teeth. She generally considered due process preferable to vengeance, but at this moment she would like nothing better than to take out her own not inconsiderable feelings of rage, remorse, and hopeless guilt on whoever the Doctor had captured from that ship. That was why things like courts and juries existed, she needed to remember that vengeance was not the same as justice and was frankly relieved that she didn’t know where in the TARDIS the prisoners were being kept. 

“Are they some kind of intergalactic police force?” 

“A cross between that and a version of the League of Nations that actually works.” 

“And you work for them?” Phryne gestured to the ‘POLICE’ sign above the external doors. 

The Doctor shrugged slightly. “I’m more what you’d call freelance, although I have been known to lend a hand when needed.” 

“Hmm. A woman after my own heart.” Phryne nodded in approval this time; she liked to see independence in women, and this woman appeared to be the ultimate mistress of her own destiny. It was rapidly undermining her lingering doubts about her. 

“Hearts in my case,” replied the Doctor. 

Phryne looked at her in confusion for a moment before realisation dawned. “You mean you’re not…?” She let the question hang, it seemed impolite to ask. 

“Human. No, I just do my best to keep you lot out of trouble. It rarely works.” 

Phryne scrutinised her rescuer closely. She had suspected this of course - the TARDIS, the mysterious golden glow that still hadn’t quite dissipated, and that hint of something in the eyes that had thrilled her and made her blood run cold. Before her world had taken such a drastic shift to the weird Phryne would have been much more sceptical, but she was currently standing in a time machine which was bigger on the inside, apparently heading towards the centre of intergalactic law to drop off the aliens who had murdered her father. The bar for incredulity had been raised somewhat where the Doctor was concerned. 

“Is everything that happens around you so thoroughly impossible Doctor?” 

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. 

“Oh, yes Alice, you are going to have to learn how to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast if you want to keep up with me.” 

‘Alice in Wonderland,’ thought Phryne ruefully. ‘At least it’s better than Miranda.’ 

As they landed the Doctor tapped out a few notes on the keyboard again, this time causing one of the mass of tangled iron branches which made up the chandelier to descend smoothly and a flat screen to unfurl in front of her at head height. She had been intending to call her contact and deliver her prisoner at once, but as the screen opened up the Doctor caught sight of her reflection. She tried to obscure her own curiosity in front of Phryne whilst covertly evaluating the new development. Not bad, she tried an experimental smile. ‘ _O_ _h my gods I’ve got dimples_ _, I_ _haven’t had dimples in_ ** _millennia_** ** _,_** _this is fantastic!_ _’_  

“Before we head out there perhaps we should smarten up a little,” she suggested. “Follow me.” 

As it turned out the Doctor’s idea of ‘just the thing’ when it came to recovery from shock and emotional trauma – not to mention aging by six months in under a second - was pretty much the same as Phryne’s, so she enjoyed a hot bath in a tub the size of a swimming pool and a glass of something extra-terrestrial which tasted a lot like good quality spiced rum. Lounging and relaxed at the edge of the pool, she took the opportunity to paint her toenails. It was these little rituals, seemingly superficial to an outside observer, which helped her return to herself, stopped her from drowning as she focused on the things she could control. 

When she was done, she joined the Doctor in a wardrobe twice the size of the British Library and eventually selected an afternoon dress in deep red silk with cream stockings and wine-coloured Mary Janes. Over the top, she threw a floor length jacket of ivory satin and lace which revealed tantalising flashes of the red silk beneath it as she moved. The ensemble was topped off with a matching cream cloche, decorated around the band with large, crimson ostrich feathers that perfectly matched the shade of her lipstick.     

The Doctor appeared to be having a little difficulty selecting her outfit, but with Phryne’s expert assistance she exchanged her battered menswear for a simple tea dress in white, patterned with tiny red question marks. It had deep pockets at the waist which both of them were very pleased with – dresses should have more pockets as a rule. Miss Fisher was also delighted with the addition of white stockings and some knee-high burgundy boots with flat rubber soles and silver buckles, declaring them “perfectly scandalous and wonderfully daring”. Phryne matched the dress with a velvet coat in crimson, embroidered at the sleeves and hem with a delicate pattern of black swirls and spirals. Having already expressed an enthusiasm for Phryne’s hat when she chose it, the Doctor added a matching cloche with a plain black velvet band around the centre.  

She accepted Phryne’s offer to do her make up rather shyly, reminding her a little of Dot, that childlike quality Phryne had first seen on the beach had returned a little even at close range. The Doctor declined the offer to pin up her hair though, preferring to twist it up unceremoniously under her hat, leaving golden wisps and tendrils to dangle down around her face. She topped off the ensemble with a heavy cream flight scarf, declaring as she wrapped it around her neck that it “took her back”, although she did not elaborate on the comment.  

The two of them together made a fine pair of fairy tale sisters, Snow White and Rose Red, ready to take on the universe. The image of sartorial harmony lasted until they reached the console room and the Doctor had contacted her friend at the Shadow Proclamation. Well, friend might be a bit of an exaggeration. 

“Arbiter Prime, good to see you again. I have your prisoners if you want them.” 

“Doctor? You’ve regenerated. I never thought you would find our little bounty hunt such a challenge.” 

The Doctor gritted her teeth. The Arbiter was a decent woman, a politician who did genuinely care about people and about justice. She was however blunt, to the point of rudeness with those she considered competent enough to take it. Her compassion was for the weak and she had none left to spare for the powerful. She also had a tendency to state the obvious and hone in directly on points of weakness. 

“Have you arranged for the prisoner exchange?” She asked, refusing to rise to the Arbiter’s bait. 

“Actually, Doctor I wanted to speak to you about that in person. Coniferous will meet you if you would care to land in the docking bay.” 

The Doctor nodded and signed off. Turning to Phryne, she saw questions she didn’t want to answer brewing on her lips and braced herself. 

Phryne had noticed the mention of ‘regeneration’ and wondered idly if the Arbiter was referring to the Doctor’s new outfit, although the context didn’t seem quite right. However, ‘Prisoner exchange’ did not sound like the kind of justice she had been expecting, and that was a much more pressing issue for the moment. 

“What is going to happen to the people who murdered my father when we hand them over Doctor? I assumed there would be a trial of some kind, what did you mean by a prisoner exchange.” 

The Doctor looked a little shamefaced as she replied. 

“The Sycorax haven't signed the Shadow Proclamation, that’s why I had to track them down. They can’t be brought to trial here because their government doesn’t recognise the Shadow Proclamation as a legitimate court. They  _have_  agreed to trade the freedom of a group of settlers - currently trapped on a mining colony the Sycorax have invaded - for the return of our prisoners.” 

“So, if we hand them over, the people who killed my father will walk free?” There was a desperate and incredulous fury in her voice. She supposed it had been foolish to assume it, but even surrounded by the strange and fantastical she had thought there would be some kind of justice. 

“You told me that they wouldn’t be able to harm anyone else. You lied to me, Doctor.” 

“Well you were pointing a gun at me. If you’d done something as foolish as fire it you might never have got off that island.” 

Phryne waved that truth away with a dismissive gesture and continued to glare at the other woman, debating whether or not to retrieve the pistol from her handbag and attempt some summary justice of her own. As Phryne stood in indecision, the Doctor moved over to the console, flipped a switch, and played a short chord on the piano keyboard. A small section of the mosaic floor detached and rose upwards, revealing a cabinet from which the Doctor extracted a glowing golden sphere the size of a tennis ball and threw it to Phryne who caught it reflexively. 

“That’s them in there. You really need revenge that badly, we can chuck them in a supernova and leave the colonists to death and slavery. 8,000 people, miners and their families. It’s your choice.” 

It wouldn’t happen like that of course. The Doctor might be willing to let the Sycorax die, or at least live on in a perpetual loop indefinitely for their crimes, but she would at least try to save the miners as well. Probably at a cost in lives when the Sycorax fought back. It was not a plan she relished, which was why she didn’t mention it to Phryne. 

The golden ball was warm in Phryne’s hand and glinted like firelight. She had made a choice before between justice and her own selfish needs. When the man who murdered her sister had promised her answers in return for assisting in his release, she had turned to Jack and asked him to be her conscience. He had such unwavering certainty in her, knowing she would choose justice, and she had. She would have gladly put her life on the line for the freedom of 8,000 strangers, but to let a ship full of killers go free to kill again in order to secure their release? To let her father’s death go unpunished? There was no justice here, but the weight of those lives was in her hands and she had to make this choice alone. 

Seconds passed and the only sound in the console room was the ragged huff of her breathing as Phryne tried to calm herself. It cost her a great deal to hand the little ball back to the Doctor and she did not meet her eyes as she did so. 

“Alright Doctor,” she said shortly. “Let’s get this over with.” 

 

 

They stepped out of the TARDIS into a fairly innocuous white tiled corridor and the Doctor, who seemed to feel that Phryne should be impressed by their location, had begun a lengthy exposition, explaining the history of the Shadow Proclamation to which Phryne was not really listening. Turning the corner, however, they were met by a person who immediately commanded her full attention. 

Coniferous was a tree from the Forest of Cheem and Senior Attaché to the Arbiter Prime. His skin was smooth and pure white flecked with brown, like the bark of a silver birch in autumn. Elegant slender branches traced upwards from his neck to a crown of yellow leaves and sliver-grey teasels at the back of his head; the effect was rather striking, and Phryne couldn’t help wondering absently how it would be to touch and be touched by hands made of living wood.  

The few minutes of his company they had to endure on the way up to the Arbiter’s office was enough to chase that thought from her mind. He had a simpering, obsequious manner which entirely failed to conceal the naked self-interest which ran beneath his every word and action. Here was a politician, she thought, not a policeman. His boss, when they were ushered into her office was also clearly a political animal. More human looking than her Attaché, her skin and hair were ethereally pale and her eyes a bloody red. Her expression however was that of a benevolent and kindly matriarch, and her smile in greeting seemed at least four parts genuine pleasure to six parts strategic calculation. 

“Doctor. So glad you could make it,” she paused looking inquiringly at Phryne. “And who is your companion?” 

“Phryne Fisher.” Phryne’s smile was business like as she took the woman’s hand. “The Sycorax ship you asked the Doctor to capture kidnapped me and murdered my father. I understand you would like to use the crew in some kind of prisoner exchange, but I would like to know what kind of justice I can expect out of that arrangement.” 

The Doctor was fixing the Arbiter with a cold, commanding expression which sharpened the soft lines of her face. Her tiny body, still shimmering faintly with golden light, seemed to draw all attention and energy to her. It was the Arbiter’s office, the Arbiter’s station, but the Doctor was clearly in charge. 

“The Sycorax have violated the laws of time, Arbiter. This is swiftly leaving your jurisdiction and entering mine. Not something either of us want.”  

Phryne did not have a lot of experience reading non-human facial expressions, but the look that flashed over the Arbiter’s face, just for an instant, was one of fear. This was a powerful woman, in the centre of her own domain, and the Doctor frightened her. A fact which was worth remembering. Phryne would remember too that it was the ‘laws of time’ not her, or her father, that led the Doctor to make what was, unmistakably, a threat. 

Apparently, whatever she intended to do about this threat, the Arbiter did not want an audience. She turned to Phryne with a politician’s smile which did little to reassure her.  

“Ms Fisher, is it?” The tone was sympathetic, but also more calculated than before, she was no longer as happy to see them as she had been. “I assure you we will take this matter extremely seriously. If you are willing to give a witness statement to my Attaché, I would like to have a private word with the Doctor.” Here she beckoned to Coniferous, who did not look at all happy about being excluded from this meeting, a sentiment that Phryne wholeheartedly shared.  

However, knowing how far to push her luck when it came to charming her way into places people wanted her kept out of was a well-honed skill, and Phryne knew she would be better off obeying the instruction, at least for now. Besides, Coniferous struck her as someone she might be able to charm. Even if he was a tree he was also a man, and Phryne had her ways when it came to getting men to do as she pleased. Besides, a witness statement put her back firmly into territory she felt familiar in, even in such unfamiliar surroundings. She turned a dazzling smile on the handsome Attaché and brushed a strand of hair from her face. 

“Looks like I’m in your capable hands then, Attaché Coniferous. Lead the way.” 

“Please,” he replied with an equally disingenuous smile, “call me Coni.” 

She took his arm – or possibly branch, she wasn’t exactly sure – it felt solid and flexible under her hands, like the trunk of a young sapling. Turning to the Doctor she waved a goodbye. They agreed with a look to exchange information afterwards, although Phryne was a little unsure how edited the Doctor’s version of events would be. She had not proven to be especially honest thus far. 

Once they had left, the Doctor turned to the Arbiter Prime with a questioning expression. 

“Trouble?” 

“No Doctor, politics. It’s what happens after you leave.” She met the Doctor’s gaze, not something just anyone could do, but the Arbiter was not a novice when it came to dealing with Time Lords.  

“Some friends within the Sycorax High Command have been in touch. They have indicated that they might be willing to join the Shadow Proclamation.” She did not sound particularly overjoyed by the prospect. 

The Doctor raised her eyebrows. “And you don’t trust them?” 

“Obviously not. The Sycorax tribes are only sporadically ruled by the High Command, and most of them have been operating as mercenary scavengers for centuries. However, if even some of them are willing to submit to the rule of law, it would make this part of the galaxy considerably safer.” 

“Two questions: why have they changed their minds now, and what’s the catch?” 

“They have changed their minds because the Captain of that ship is the son of the Supreme Commander of the Sycorax High Command, which makes the Commander vulnerable. The catch is that whilst they  _will_  allow him to be tried as part of the conditions of their signing the Proclamation, they will  _not_  submit to trial by jury.” 

The Doctor offered up a silent prayer to a group of minor deities who owed her a favour and was unsurprised when they failed spectacularly to deliver. 

“Trial by combat?” she asked, knowing the answer. 

The Arbiter nodded. Her expression was shrewd and the Doctor realised that after having known this woman since she was a minor Adjunct to a Junior Peace Maker -  decades from the Arbiter’s perspective, a frankly incalculable timespan and several new faces, from the Doctor’s – she was weighing her up. The Arbiter was uncertain that the Doctor was up to the task. 

“What caused your latest regeneration, Doctor?” The question was blunt and without a hint of remorse, despite it being the Arbiter herself that had asked the Doctor to follow the Sycorax. 

“I had to ram that ship away from a pocket of temporal instability before it ripped time apart. Not my best plan, but I’ve saved planets with worse.” 

“You rammed their ship? In the  _time vortex_? In that case, it’s a miracle you made it at all. You always did have the luck of the devil.” 

“I’ve been several.” 

The Arbiter nodded, hoping that her information about the Sycorax high command had defused the potentially lethal force that was the Doctor doing the right thing. There was a compromise here which could keep the settlers the Sycorax had taken hostage safe, and offer something, not entirely unlike justice for the Doctor’s friend. The Arbiter was fairly sure that, despite the new face, no version of the Doctor could back down from this kind of challenge.  

“You and your companion both have the right to challenge the Sycorax captain, given your respective claims to personal injury. But Doctor, this is important, he must submit. Without him, our friends in the High Command have no leverage, the Supreme Commander may not even agree to the prisoner exchange without him. With him serving time in Storm Cage we have leverage.” She met the Doctor’s gaze again. “Please don’t kill this one.” 

The Doctor’s smile was impenetrable; it made no promises. 

“I better go find Phryne and tell her. I don’t think she’s going to be happy about this.” 

“None of us are. We simply play the hand we are dealt, Doctor.” 

“Don’t talk to me about hands, the last time I did this I believe I lost one.” 

 

Phryne noticed that the obsequious, deferential tone which ‘Coni’ had adopted on the short walk to the Arbiter’s office had shifted to something less sycophantic. Clearly that performance had been for the Doctor. Now they were alone, he appeared to feel he was the authority in the room and it showed. She adopted an expression of wide eyed innocence which, it occurred to her, had never fooled Jack for a moment. It seemed to pass muster, and she allowed herself a moment of internal satisfaction at the deception. They were light years from everyone and everything she knew, but she was faced with a man who was in the process of underestimating her. This was going to be easy.    

“You know I’ve never been off of my own planet before?” She widened her eyes further and gripped his arm a little tighter, as if for reassurance. “It’s a little overwhelming.” 

It was hardly even a lie, but Phryne had no intention of slowing down long enough to let that thought catch up with her. 

“A space station virgin? I’ll do my best to be gentle. Perhaps a tour?” 

The flirtation was laid on thick, but was somehow unconvincing. She prided herself on her ability to judge attraction and this felt forced, although perhaps that was just how Trees were. In the absence of any frame of reference she decided to trust her instincts. Coniferous wanted something from her, and it wasn’t her body.  

The smile he was giving her crawled under her skin and made her wonder forcefully if the man was flammable. She returned it with one which was equally disingenuous. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be taking my statement Coni. I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble on my account.” 

“Plenty of time for that,” he leant in close, suddenly eager. “Well you should know, you came here with a time traveller after all.” 

“Yes, she was kind enough to come to my rescue. Do you know Dr Smith at all, I see the Arbiter has had dealings with her?” 

He sniggered. It sounded like rustle of the wind through dead leaves. 

“ _Dr Smith?_  I never realised you were  _that_  green?” 

This sounded promising. Phryne had been hoping for information on the Sycorax, thinking she might find a way to get justice for her father without sacrificing any lives, but information on the Doctor was definitely valuable. 

“Well she did say she was ‘The Doctor’ to her friends, but I can’t say I know her that well.” 

“She’s the Doctor to almost everyone and she’s not  _Dr Smith_  to anyone as far as I know. It must be a cover of some kind. No, the Doctor is ‘The Doctor’. No other name required. Most famous or infamous of all the Time Lords – well Time Lady now - that’s a first as far as I know. You were with him when he regenerated?” 

Not for the first time since she began this peculiar adventure, Phryne was struck with the irritating realisation that the universe had for once, rendered her two steps behind. Two very large steps in this case. Luckily the innocent act she had deployed for this interrogation meant she was spared the trouble of pretending she understood the Attaché’s question. It occurred to her that the Doctor’s friend, who had died in the Sycorax attack had also introduced himself as ‘The Doctor’. Maybe the title was passed on in some way and her Doctor had inherited it from him. 

“Regenerated?” she looked up at him with an expression of utterly contrived awe, letting him believe she hung upon his every word. Sure enough, the more ignorant he thought she was, the more information he provided. Clearly, he had an agenda, but Phryne was still uncertain as to what exactly it was. What did he want from her? 

“The last hope of the Time Lords. According to legend, at the point of death they are consumed by a blaze of fire, and when the flames die down they are changed. The same memories, but a new face, a new body, a new them for all intents and purposes. When the Doctor left here to track down the Sycorax he was a very different man. Well, he was a  _man_  for starters.”      

‘Aha!’ Phryne decided to brush over the apparently phoenix-like powers of her new friend until she could ask her about them directly. What had caught her attention was the slight change in register as Coniferous spoke. The hint of need, the look, just for a second of what was it – infatuation maybe – but not for her, and not even really for the Doctor. She had seen that look enough times from men herself. Coniferous was in love with a legend, and he wanted to know how well this new version of his hero would measure up. That was what he wanted from Phryne. Useful to know.  

“I didn’t see anything like that Coni. A man’s voice spoke to us out of the TARDIS when the Sycorax had us captive and a woman came to my rescue after my plane had crashed.” Phryne decided to drop the pretence of flirtation and focus on the Tree’s apparent weakness. “She is rather marvellous, isn’t she? I’ve never met anyone quite like her.” 

“Marvellous? Historically yes. Dangerous too. And there is no-one like the Doctor. I would say I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, but it’s quite clear you have no idea. I’d run whilst you still can if I were you.” 

The innocence was gone from her expression as she tilted her chin up at him. That remark had nettled her and she was growing tired of this game. 

“Now where would be the fun in that?” 

Phryne dropped Coniferous’ arm and drew away from him to peer out of a small porthole window revealing the vastness of space; beautiful, deadly,  _enticing_. She couldn’t look away. Coniferous was watching her, jealousy and curiosity fighting for space on his pale, handsome face. 

“Is this the first time you’ve seen it?” He gestured out at the blackness, peppered with stars and the purple swirl of a distant nebula. 

She nodded wordlessly. She really hadn’t been lying, it was a bit overwhelming, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her, and she had work to do. 

“Are you going to take a statement from me?” She resumed the business-like tone she had used in the Arbiter’s office. He gave her a formal nod which shook the silvery teasels at the back of his head. ‘He really is beautiful.’ She thought ruefully. ‘Pity he’s such an insufferable cad, it seems like such a terrible waste.’ 

Coniferous shepherded her into a small white room, it was square with a white table, two chairs and no windows. No distinguishing features of any kind, not even a smell. He took her statement with a perfunctory indifference which strongly suggested that no-one would ever read it. She answered his questions coldly, determined - now she had the information she wanted - to show no weakness in front of him. 

Once again, his interest only really seemed caught when mentioning the Doctor; he asked if she knew how the Sycorax had been captured and if the Doctor had interrogated them. There was a greedy edge to his voice, as though he  _wanted_  the Doctor to be dangerous, and he wanted to watch. Phryne made a mental note to warn the Doctor about him. He might not be human, but she could recognise the possessive air of a man who did not take kindly to rejection; they could be dangerous. She was immensely glad when he led her out of the claustrophobic little space and left her to stare out of a huge picture window. She pressed close to the glass, finding it oddly warm to the touch, and gazed out in rapture at the gleaming towers of intergalactic justice, bright against the pale glimmer of the stars.          

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Shadow Proclamation is Dr Who cannon and described as 'outer space police' by the 10th Doctor when he takes Donna Noble there after the Daleks steal the Earth (bastards). The character of the Arbiter is aesthetically modeled on one of the people who they meet there, although if it is her, it's a long time later in her timeline.
> 
> Coniferous' species the Trees of Cheem, appear in only one episode where the 9th Doctor flirts a lot with the rather lovely Jabe. They are supposed to be descendants of the tropical rainforests. The inclusion of a scene where Phryne flirts for information with an alien tree was added after discussion with the slack writing group - I love you guys, you were absolutely right.
> 
> The Sycorax are also only in one episode, there is probably more detailed information about their social structure out there but for the purposes of this story I invented something that fits. Consider it AU or later in Sycorax history if you are especially fussed by this. They are however mercenary scavengers, and the 10th Doctor did indeed lose a hand after a fight with one. He got better obvs.


	10. Unnatural Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and the Doctor come face to face with Hoxa, the the Sycorax captain responsible for Henry Fisher's death.

Having reluctantly relinquished her prisoners to the Arbiter Prime, the Doctor strode purposefully down the corridor, hands in her dress pockets, red velvet coat undone and flapping behind her. She found Phryne alone by an enormous viewing window staring in awe at the spectacle. The Shadow Proclamation was built on three interconnecting asteroids, with jagged white towers clustered on top like crystal teeth, the whole edifice was lit from below by a pale green glow; smaller meteoroids danced around the perimeter shields, twinkling as they caught the light. The Doctor had seen the view many times – and many others which were far more spectacular - but she never grew tired of seeing these sights for the first time through someone else’s eyes.

Phryne, however, appeared to have more on her mind than sightseeing. She was frowning slightly and once again playing absentmindedly with the swallow broach she had pinned to the creamy lace of her jacket.

“Hello again, Alice,” the Doctor grinned at her. “How did it go with Senior Attaché Coniferous? Or should I call him ‘Coni’ too?”

Phryne rolled her eyes theatrically.

“I’m sure he’d be delighted it if you did. Mostly that interview was just an excuse to find out more about you and your exploits. I’d watch out for him if I were you.” She sighed heavily. “Although, frankly his interrogation strategy could use some work. He may have been immune to _my_ charms, but yours don’t seem to have been lost on him. I only had to bring up your name and he was spilling all of your secrets,” she said pointedly.

The Doctor frowned, Coniferous hadn’t known any of her secrets to spill, but there was plenty Phryne didn’t know about her which would be common knowledge to anyone at the Shadow Proclamation. She sidestepped Miss Fisher’s obvious bait.

“If it makes you feel any better, humans and trees are not really romantically compatible anyway.”

Phryne gave her a questioning look and raised her eyebrows, the Doctor countered with a face of cherubic innocence.

“Splinters.”

Phryne let out a loud peal of laughter that caused a passing group of diplomats to look over in their direction.

“Now be serious ‘Doctor Smith’,” she let the inverted commas fall like lead weights around the pseudonym, “is there anything you want to tell me?”

The Doctor raised two entirely unapologetic eyebrows.

“I will say again Phryne, you were _pointing a gun at me_. So yes, I may have simplified the situation a little.”

“The man in the TARDIS, the one who saved my life. That was somehow _you_?”

“A long way from the first man I’ve been, and yes.”

“Oh.” Phryne paused, studying the Doctor’s face for any trace of a lie but found none. It wasn’t, when you got down to it, so much more fantastical than anything else which had happened to her since she had first encountered the Sycorax ship. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And for the record, I would prefer it if you didn’t point any kind of firearm at me again. I respond much more readily to biscuits, if you have any handy.”

“Sadly not, but I will bear it in mind. And – for the record – _I_ would prefer it if you stopped lying to me Doctor. This,” she gestured out of the window at the spectacular view, “is confusing enough without being complicated by lies of omission.”

The Doctor nodded, knowing as she did that the nod would itself be the first of many lies that she would have to tell her companion from this point on. Lies to protect her or to protect others from her, lies told because she would have no possible way of understanding the truth; children sometimes need to be lied to. It was a lesson the Doctor had learned long ago and she was very good at it.

“Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

The Doctor gave her an enigmatic smile and a shake of the head, and Phryne realised that secrets, and in all probability, lies, were things she was just going to have to tolerate. Assuming, of course, that she couldn’t find the answers for herself. Never a safe assumption around Phryne Fisher. For now, though, she let the matter be and decided to change the subject.

“And how was your meeting with the Arbiter Prime?”

“Ah, yes. I wanted to talk to you about that.” The Doctor remembered all too well the look on Phryne’s face when she had been pointing that gun at her. This was probably not going to be resolved without an argument.

“The Sycorax have agreed to sign up to the Shadow Proclamation – which would mean they would have to let the miners go – and that the Captain of the ship that took you hostage should stand trial.”

Phryne gave her a look of surprise which shaded quickly into suspicion.

“That sounds very generous of them. Why?”

“Short version? Politics.”

“And the long version?”

“The Sycorax are self-important scavengers with no real home world and very little influence in this part of the galaxy. Joining up would be beneficial to some within their hierarchy but others are resisting it, including their Supreme Commander who is allied with Captain of the ship I just turned over to the Arbiter.”

The Doctor’s tone made it quite clear that the universe did not contain a sufficiently potent adjective to convey the true depths of the idiocy with which she was being forced to contend.

“Also, they may be capricious and cruel but most of the Sycorax leadership would object to punching holes in time, which is very nearly what that utter cretin of a Captain did. Some of them want a way to get rid of the Captain without moving directly against the Supreme Commander, and we are it. As an added bonus, having the Captain in custody may force the Supreme Commander’s hand and get him to sign up to the Shadow Proclamation. At least that’s what the Arbiter is hoping for.”

The Doctor had spoken quickly, hoping to ease the subject of exactly how they might achieve this into the conversation gently. She was impressed that Phryne picked up immediately on the crux of the matter.

“ _We_ are it?” Miss Fisher asked.

The Doctor gave a short huff and nodded.

“That’s the bad news. The Sycorax don’t have trial by jury. They have trial by sword. As the wronged parties, either of us has the right to offer a challenge.”

“But that’s positively medieval! The Arbiter’s allowing this? So far I can’t say intergalactic law has a great deal to recommend it Doctor.”

“As opposed to hanging people?”

Phryne set her mouth in a grim line and her eyes were cold and hard. She had killed before, both in self-defence and in war time, and whilst she had her doubts about capital punishment, the Doctor was right; she had personally ensured that a fair few killers faced the noose for their crimes. This was not so different.

“In that case, it looks like my father will get justice after all. How do I issue the challenge?”

“You don’t. I do,” the Doctor said firmly.

“I assure you Doctor, I am a highly proficient swordswoman, I was trained by a national champion back in England.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” the Doctor lied. “For this to work we need him to submit. Without him as a prisoner the Arbiter and her allies within the Sycorax High Command have no leverage. Can you hold yourself back after what he did to your father?”

“Believe me Doctor, I have resisted the temptation to kill a man under worse provocation.”

The Doctor met her gaze for a long moment before nodding reluctantly.

“In that case, you’re my second.” Phryne made to interrupt but the Doctor cut her off. “Don’t argue with me Alice - you may be good, but I’ve done this before.”

“You’ve been in single combat with a Sycorax captain?” Phryne’s tone was mocking, obviously disbelieving, her expression switching to astonishment at the Doctor’s serious nod. “You have? What happened?”

“I fought him to submission, got him to agree to take his ship and go, he tried to stab me in the back so I killed him with a satsuma,” she recounted with a certain amount of smugness.

“A _satsuma_?”

“Never underestimate how dangerous I can be when harbouring citrus fruit.”

Phryne simply gaped at her but the Doctor’s next words were in deadly earnest.

“I’m going to need you to watch my back in there and to watch the Captain’s Second. Odds are they won’t play by the rules.”

“You can count on me, Doctor.” Phryne’s smile was not exactly reassuring. “I’ve never had much use for rules either.”

The Doctor nodded; all in all the conversation could have gone a lot worse.

 

   

The courtroom made such a good substitute for an arena that Phryne was forced to wonder if this was the first time a species had insisted on such an archaic substitute for justice. The Doctor would probably be able to tell her of course, but right now she had more important things on her mind.

The Sycorax Captain strode out of the doors which led back down to the cells where the crew of the ship were being kept. Unfortunately, he seemed entirely unharmed after his previous altercation with the Doctor. He was at least 7ft tall, towering over his adversary in ragged scarlet robes strung about with macabre ornaments; bones and feathers and bird skulls held together with string. His face was covered by a skull-like helmet which reached down past the jagged gash where a human nose would be, the skin underneath was raw and red like charred flesh. The effect was most unpleasant. There was a sword at his hip and a staff in his hand. He was smiling. It was not a pleasant sight.

The Doctor and Phryne had both selected swords from a battered chest in a junk room in the recesses of the TARDIS. They were light-weight and sharp. This would play to their advantage in manoeuvrability next to the hulking Captain, but made them next to useless for blocking attacks. They would have to be careful not to get hit. Just in case, Phryne also packed her pistol, strapping it securely into her garter. She didn’t want to take any chances.

The Captain’s Second came as a surprise, although possibly it shouldn’t have. Coniferous had apparently volunteered – claiming that it sent a message of impartiality which could otherwise be challenged, given the Doctor’s long association with the Shadow Proclamation. Neither the Doctor nor Phryne trusted his motivations, and the latter vowed to watch him like a hawk in case he tried anything. She did not like the furtive looks he was sneaking at the Doctor at all. She rolled her eyes, a hostile and unpredictable jilted lover in the mix, just what they needed.

The Arbiter Prime sat in a steel gallery along the white walls, presiding regally over the proceedings in black silk, like a medieval queen in mourning.

“Captain Hoxa of the Sycorax; you stand accused of the theft of restricted technologies, damage to the fabric of time, kidnap and murder. By the traditions of the Sycorax you have been challenged to trial by combat by the Doctor, Time Lady of Galifrey. Do you accept the challenge?”

“I will crush this Lady of Time beneath my feet and take her head as a trophy!” Spat the Captain, leering at the Doctor through the eyes of his masklike helmet.

Phryne glanced at the Doctor and was surprised to see that she was looking at the captain with an expression, not of fear or anger but of pity, pity and sadness. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, and in the stillness of the arena Phryne could feel again that inexorable force of time, the weight of eons which she had seen before in the depths of the Doctor's eyes, now radiating off her like a blistering heat.

“You don’t have to do this Hoxa. Submit, accept punishment for your crimes and we can end this without any more bloodshed.”

The Captain sneered at her in undisguised contempt and the Doctor gave a sad little sigh of resignation.

“The last time a Sycorax Captain faced me across an arena he fell, without honour, and I did not even turn my head to watch as he died screaming. I do not fear you, child.”

Hoxa screamed, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth. “You will die by my hand!” He cast aside his staff and drew his sword, wielding it two handed and putting his entire weight behind the blade, and he charged.

The Doctor gave another weary sigh and deftly side stepped the captain's wild thrust, circling round and swiping at his knees. He jumped forward as her sword ripped through the cloth of his robe but did not stumble, pivoting quickly and returning to the attack.

Phryne was trying to divide her attention between the fight and Coniferous, whose eyes were darting swiftly between the combatants and his expression now was one of undisguised hatred.

The Sycorax Captain had learned from his early error and was using his height and reach to his advantage. As long as he kept the Doctor in front of him he could hold her off easily, but he was well outmatched for speed and couldn't land a blow.

There was an almost dreamlike look of quiet contemplation on the Doctor's face as she ducked and weaved, always keeping out of his reach but never quite managing to get in under his arm.

She attempted a lunging strike of her own but he countered with a heavy slash and she lost her hat as she was forced to the floor, rolling bodily away from him as his sword bit into the tiles where her head had been a second before. A shiny coil of golden hair lay on the ground where his blade had hit.

The Doctor gave a deep chuckle, her eyes blazing with a terrifying raw energy as she righted herself to face her adversary once more.

“Come on Hoxa,” she goaded, “I thought you wanted to kill me, not give me an embarrassing haircut! Also, you should know, I have had worse.”

She actually spared the time to wink at Phryne over Hoxa’s shoulder; she almost seemed to be enjoying herself. The Captain, by contrast, was becoming increasingly agitated, which was evidently the Doctor’s plan. As he lunged again she spun past, burying her blade deep in the pit of his knee. He staggered to the floor, and with a deft kick she knocked the sword out of his hand. Slowly, she circled round to face him, her blade kissing the skin of his neck, and flipped his sword up with her foot, catching it neatly in her left hand.

“To be honest, that was a bit of an anti-climax. You should have put in a bit more effort.” Her voice held a teacher’s cadence; not angry, just disappointed.

The Captain began to laugh, a manic humourless sound that rang through the empty hall and echoed off the steel balcony where the Arbiter Prime still sat silently watching events unfold; even in the face of victory it made Phryne’s flesh creep. Her attention was momentarily distracted by Coniferous, who had begun to sneak around the periphery of the arena. ‘Now where is he off to,’ she wondered. All eyes were on Hoxa and the Doctor, no-one was watching her; instinctively she switched her sword to her left hand and extracted her pistol from her garter, hiding it swiftly in her sleeve as she continued to watch the Senior Attaché circle the tableau in the centre of the room.

Hoxa had recovered his breath and was speaking again, his voice cracked with pain but still defiant.

“I will never submit to you, Doctor. You will have to kill me. An unarmed man kneeling at your feet. We will see if the stories are true. That you really are a monster like they say.”

“I’m too old and too ugly to be baited by you, Hoxa. Submit and end this charade, or you will find out just how much of a monster I can be.” The Doctor’s face was cold, but inside she was screaming filthy curses in languages only she remembered. The bastard had it right. She may have lived lifetimes where she could have cut this man’s worthless throat where he knelt for what he’d done, but this was not one of them. Besides, they needed him alive.

They remained in motionless stalemate as the seconds ticked past, until Coniferous finally reached his goal. He had edged is way round to the space in front of the doors where Hoxa had first entered and picked up his discarded staff.

“Look out Doctor!” Phryne screamed, taking aim with her pistol as she did so. She was expecting him to charge forward brandishing the weapon like a quarterstaff, but was unprepared for the bolt of lightning that discharged. He was aiming for Hoxa. The Doctor, however, had looked up at Phryne’s shout; dropping her own sword and grasping Hoxa’s blade in both hands she spun in a blur of crimson velvet until she stood between the wounded Sycorax and the treacherous Tree. She blocked the blast with the sword, the force of the recoil slamming her backwards past Hoxa, leaving her winded on the ground with her burgundy boots smoking.

Recovering from her surprise quickly, Phryne fired two rounds straight into Coniferous’ shoulder; sap oozed from the wound as he fell to the floor, doubled over in pain as he clutched at it whimpering. Pistol in one hand, sword in the other, Phryne advanced on Hoxa, kicking the Doctor’s fallen blade out of his reach even as he reached for it. She looked for the first time into the eyes of the man who had killed her father.

“Do you know who I am?”

“The tales tell that the Doctor likes to keep pets. You are one of them.”

Her voice and hands were steady, the pull of anger was tugging at her trigger finger, and she longed to rid the universe of this man and lay the ghost of Henry Fisher to rest with him, but she knew that satisfaction would be fleeting and the remorse would likely last the rest of her life. This animal was baiting her; he wanted them to believe he would die rather than submit, but close up she could see he was afraid.

“My name is Phryne Fisher, my father was Henry George Fisher, Baron of Richmond. You murdered him. You murdered him and you never knew his name.”

“I have no need to learn the names of cattle,” he grunted; his disdain was palpable, even through the pain, which had him hunched over a leg that would no longer support his weight.

“Oh son.” The Doctor had recovered and stepped up beside Phryne, shaking her head and still holding the Captain’s sword. “You’re really not that bright, are you?”

Phryne cocked her pistol and pointed it straight into the left eye socket of the Captain’s helmet.

“Let me be clear, Captain. The primary reason I have not seen fit to put a bullet in your skull is that the Doctor just saved your life and I wouldn’t like it to have been a wasted effort. Now let’s try this again. Yield.”

To add emphasis, although it was hardly necessary at this point, the Doctor swung the blade up slightly until it was level with the Captain’s right eye. With death filling the foreground of his vision and the blood from his knee adding a deeper red to the scarlet of his robes, he finally capitulated with a snarl of ill grace.

“I will yield, but you have earned the enmity of the Sycorax this day.”

“Is that supposed to frighten me?” Asked Phryne with incredulous disdain.

“I don’t know about you Alice, but I’m quaking in my mildly singed but still resolutely scandalous boots,” replied the Doctor.

The Arbiter rose to her feet on the balcony and addressed the participants.

“Enough! This trial is over. Hoxa of the Sycorax, you have been judged guilty of all charges laid against you and will be remanded in the containment facility Storm Cage for 106 standard galactic cycles.”

She rang a small gong, and medical personnel rushed onto the scene to take care of the wounded. As the Doctor went to have a last word with the Arbiter Prime, Phryne wandered back to the observation window and gazed out once again at the astonishing view, watching the tiny meteorites as they span and danced, occasionally crashing together, glancing off each other and changing course. She felt strangely flat after all the excitement; she supposed she had all the justice she would ever get for her father but it wouldn’t bring him back. She knew she should really go home, reassure her family that she was still alive and comfort her mother who had lost the love of her life in a way Phryne would never be able to explain to her.

The thought of carrying that emotional weight on top of her own made her weary. She wanted her friends and, although she loathed to admit it, more than anything she wanted Jack. His quiet, soothing presence had somehow become synonymous with comfort when she was in pain, even before the promise of a more intimate connection. But would he still be willing to offer it? He had walked away from her once before when he realised how much heartache her recklessness could cause him, and by the time she could return to Melbourne, he would have been through six months of grief at her disappearance. She could hardly fault him if he decided she was too much trouble. Well, she decided, if that was how he felt, she had a whole universe to explore without him before returning to comfort her mother. The idea did not bring her as much solace as it should have done.

The Doctor joined her, tossing the golden ball which had once contained the Sycorax’s stolen ship from hand to hand. She had returned her hat to her head and piled up her hair again so the missing strands were less obvious.

‘The Arbiter Prime sends her thanks - and look, a parting gift.’ She threw the ball up and caught it one handed. “Our very own Temporal Oscillator. You never know when one might come in handy.”

Phryne glanced at it absently before voicing a question.

“Why did Coniferous attack Captain Hoxa? I was certain until the last moment that he’d be aiming for you. I rather had him pegged as a jealous ex-lover, but love can do strange things to a man. Was he trying to protect you?”

“Might have been, but if so that wasn’t his only motivation. Coniferous was selling confiscated technologies to the Sycorax. He was worried that the Captain might give him away and entered the arena as his Second in case I wasn’t able to finish the job. The Arbiter already suspected him, that’s why she got him out of the room when we discussed the trial.”

“Oh. How very Machiavellian. Pity for him he wasn’t very good at it.”                      

The Doctor nodded and grinned.

“Well Alice, the day is saved, the villains have been apprehended. Shall we go pick up your ‘significant pause’ close friend, before we dive any further down the rabbit hole?”

Phryne gave her a haughty look, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Phryne Fisher, I am not dragging you around the universe to show you all the wonders of time and space, just to watch you peer wistfully out of windows while you fiddle with your jewellery.”

“I’m sure I’ve never looked wistfully out of a window in my life, least of all over a man. I’m not the pining type.” This was such a blatant lie she couldn’t help the tell-tale rise in pitch as she spoke, but mercifully the Doctor did not pull on that particular thread.

“There’s a lot more universe out there that I’d love to show you Alice, but these adventures always end one way or another. Eventually, everyone wakes up from wonderland. I’m told it’s better if you have someone around who saw it too, just to reassure yourself that you didn’t go crazy.”

Slowly, Phryne nodded and began to smile. You never know, maybe Jack _would_ be willing to jump off this cliff with her; after all she could be very persuasive. It was worth a try.

The two women linked arms and walked back down the clean white corridors of the Shadow Proclamation.

“So, tell me all about him then and try not to blush.”

“I never blush, Doctor.”

“You do, you’re blushing right now.”

“I most certainly am not.”

“Are too.”

Phryne punched the Doctor playfully on the shoulder and she retaliated by stealing Phryne’s hat. Giggling like schoolgirls, they chased each other towards the TARDIS and into the console room. With the flick of a few switches and an F sharp major, they were on their way back to Melbourne.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 10th Doctor really did kill a Sycorax worrier with a satsuma. He threw it at a control panel causing the ship they were fighting on (they were on the outside of it as it hovered above the earth, naturally) to drop the Sycorax captain off the edge of the ship. i won't lie it was a bit of a 'why do we even have that lever?' moment.


	11. Late to the Denouemont

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally a reunion. Also some exposition via curry sauce.

Jack Robinson prided himself on being a serious and sensible man. He was rational, methodical, and meticulous in his habits. He watched the world keenly and dispassionately, gathering evidence, waiting for it to blink first, showing only as much of his private self as he wished to divulge to any given audience. His keen sense of right and wrong was tempered by the practical pragmatism of a man who had spent well over a decade staring down the void between justice and law. It was a combination of traits which made him exceptionally good at his job. It was not that he did not have other facets to his character, it was that Jack Robinson, pianist, amateur thespian, and lover of good food had for a long time been kept locked strictly away whilst on the job – which for Jack was most of his waking life, regardless of what it said on the duty roster – lest it prove a distraction from the task at hand. Those things were an indulgence, a last link to the naive young man who had signed up to be a hero in a war everyone said would be over by Christmas and found only pain and blood and loss. A young man long submerged under thick layers of scar tissue, comprised primarily of dry wit and whiskey, discipline and self-control.

And then there was Phryne Fisher, and slowly parts of him he had thought long dead began to revive. He had never really believed that she was gone for good. Not in all the months she had been missing, but picking up the telephone and hearing her voice against all sensible odds and rational predictions still caused him to let out a slow breath of relief as tears pricked at the corner of his eyes and he swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.

“Phryne?”

“Jack. Is that you? Are you alright?” Her voice sounded wary and uncertain, lacking her usual ebullience.

“I’m here. And given you are the one who’s been missing without a trace for six months, I feel I should be asking you that.” His voice was hoarse with emotion, but steadier than he expected it to be.  

“I’m safe. I’m safe and I’m home. Can you come and meet me?”

“Yes of course, but what happened to you? Where have you been? Why didn’t you contact anyone?”

“I had to make an emergency landing on an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, or possibly the Timor Sea, and got stranded. Luckily for me a fellow aviatrix spotted my crashed plane from the air and came to my rescue. She just dropped me off at the airfield.”

There was something practiced and a little forced about that explanation, which made Jack think that whilst it might not be a lie, it was not the whole truth either. Not to mention the fact that it was the middle of the night, an unlikely time for a plane to set down. The thought that she could not be honest with him after everything he had been through in her absence cut cold and harsh through the warm glow of his happiness at hearing her safe and well, but it didn’t matter. He needed to see her more than he needed explanations, and there would be time to unravel that mystery later.

“We thought your father…” Her voice trembled a little as she cut him off.

“He didn’t make it.”

“I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“Heart attack, we think. I should never have made him fly.”

“You can’t blame yourself Phryne, I doubt even your remarkable powers of persuasion could have gotten him on that plane if he didn’t want to be there.”

There was a pause and when Phryne spoke again her voice was steady, as if she had taken the moment to collect herself.

“Can you come now?”

Jack decided in that moment that he really didn’t care about her lack of explanations. All he wanted in the world was to see her, to hold her close and prove to himself that she was really home and safe. His world, he realised, had become a simple one: she had asked for him, he would go to her. Nothing else mattered. Besides, if she did have any kind of explanation for all the little mysteries he had been chasing the past six months, she would be sure to fill him in, she never could resist a denouement. 

“I’m on my way,” he assured her. Looking up he noticed, slightly to his surprise that he had an audience. Hugh was beaming at him, probably thinking about the relief Dot would feel when he told her Phryne was alright. Mac had been following his half of the conversation closely, looking like a woman who had never, in her life been more thankful to be wrong. They exchanged a glance of mingled exasperation and utter, abject relief at the improbable phenomenon that was Phryne Fisher.

“And I think Doctor MacMillan would like a word,” Jack added to Phryne, handing over the receiver.

He hurried to gather his things from his office, slipping the mysterious photograph from the Adventuress’ Club into the inside pocket of his jacket along with his notebook, into which he had copied the message from the membership register. He also took all of Phryne’s correspondence and the list of destinations he had found in his flat from the folder on his desk. As he rushed out towards his waiting motorcar he heard Mac say:

“You’re alive then? It’s lucky the Inspector’s not a betting man or I’d owe him dinner.” 

 

 

Jack sped towards the airfield at a frantic pace; the dark streets were mercifully quiet, and when he reached his destination it appeared completely deserted. Feeling a sense of trepidation, he pulled a torch from the glove compartment of the police motorcar and made his way towards the hangar, which was little more than a dark mass against the stars as the moon had not yet risen.

He heard a faint noise from inside as he approached and pulled open the large hangar doors; the padlock which would normally have secured them was dangling open from the bolt, and he wondered idly if Miss Fisher was responsible – picking locks was something of a habit with her - although if this was where she had stored her plane then possibly she had a key. The space inside was dark and smelled of engine oil and dry grass; the light from his torch flickered off propellers and landing gear casting strange shadows across the walls.

Jack felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Something was wrong here. Where was she? He had his truncheon in the pocket of his coat and was beginning to wish he had thought to bring a gun. Switching the torch to his left hand he gripped the cosh before calling out into the darkness.

“Hello? Miss Fisher?”

Silence.

“Phryne?”

A gust of wind whistled round the corrugated iron of the aeroplane hangar, causing his coat to flap around his legs as he advanced further into the gloom, looking for the source of the noise. As he did so, a sound cut through the eerie stillness of the place. He had heard it before. The rhythmic, mechanical wheezing had been the overture to a dream, the memory of which had at once comforted and haunted him throughout the long months since Miss Fisher’s disappearance. This time he could see what was causing it and the sight was enough to have him questioning his own sanity.

Directly in front of him, where seconds before the beam of his torch had cut a clean line through to the stationary body of a Tiger Moth, a large blue box began to flicker in and out of existence in time to the rise and fall of the strangely familiar sound. As the noise died, the box solidified, and Jack turned off his torch and slipped it into his pocket. The hangar was now illuminated by the light on the top of the box as well as the glow emanating from its frosted windows.

He stood stock still in a state of utter bafflement as the door opened revealing - as if it could possibly be anyone else - Miss Phryne Fisher, perfectly attired in silk and satin and looking outrageously pleased to see him. He dropped the cosh back into his pocket. A small but significant part of his brain was insisting he had finally succumbed to the nervous breakdown he had been skirting around for months. Still, he could not supress the involuntary smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth and made his eyes crinkle at the edges. Doubtless, he was about to learn how this trick was done.

“You’re late, Miss Fisher.” He glanced up at the box behind her and noticed that the word ‘POLICE’ was illuminated across the top in white letters. “Although apparently your talent for gaining access to police resources hasn’t deserted you in your absence. Should I be jealous?”

“Always Jack. I am the envy of all right-thinking people.”

Phryne closed the gap between them until she was standing very close, she lifted her hand to smooth his hair under his hat where it had started to flop down over his forehead, and straightened his tie, which he had loosened at some point before Mac had arrived in his office.

“I thought you might have given up on me.” She still sounded playful, but there was an underlying current of real concern beneath the surface. Her eyes were pleading with him for the comfort and reassurance she would never admit to needing.    

“Not even for a moment.”

Phryne beamed at him, pulling him down by his lapels for a kiss that filled his entire world and drove every mystery surrounding her unexplained absence and even more inexplicable return temporarily from his mind. By the time they surfaced, Phryne’s hands had found their way around Jack’s waist under his suit jacket and her hat had been dislodged by his fingers in her hair. She fished his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped a trace of her lipstick from his mouth; he smoothed down her hair before reaching down to retrieve her hat, brushing it off a little sheepishly before handing it back to her.

He glanced towards the TARDIS again, raising his eyebrows and pulling down the corners of his mouth in an expression of pre-emptive scepticism.

“So, are you going to fill me in? I get the distinct impression that I haven’t heard the whole story here.” He gestured towards the police box for good measure.

She followed his gaze, struck at once by the utter impossibility of explaining what had happened to her.

“Honestly, Inspector, I think it might be better if I show you. I’m not entirely sure you will believe this even if you see it with your own eyes. Besides, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

She took his hand and pulled him through the TARDIS doors, watching his face with interest. It was not an easy thing to rattle Jack Robinson - that was what made it so delightful - so this was a moment she had been looking forward to. He stood motionless for a full ten seconds, his mouth actually agape, (a delicious and unexpected development), before his face froze into the careful blank which meant his mind was desperately trying to come up with a rational explanation, preferably one which did not tear apart the laws of physics as he knew them.

He then proceeded to methodically trace his fingers along the walls, checking for hidden mirrors or other conjurer’s tricks, and poking his head behind the curtained doorways to stare nonplussed, at the long, winding corridors beyond. Then he exited the way they had entered and proceeded to repeat the action on the outer walls, knocking occasionally; the sound reverberated throughout the inside of the TARDIS, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Finally, he returned to the entrance and wrapped one arm around the outside of the TARDIS, laying it flat on the wall at a right angle to the door and parallel to his body. Then he swept his other along the internal wall, observing carefully as his right hand passed right through the space which should have been occupied by his left.

He turned back to Phryne with an inquisitive frown. “Impressive. Are you going to tell me how it’s done?”

“Science, lots and lots of science,” replied the Doctor, who had entered via one of the internal doors whilst he was trying to work out the mysterious dimensions of the TARDIS. “You must be Phryne’s mysterious policeman.”

She fixed him with a dimpled grin and stuck out her hand which Jack shook, meeting her eyes with the expressionless civility he reserved for those who could potentially assist him in his enquires. ‘A policeman not a politician,’ thought Phryne with pride, the Shadow Proclamation could learn a thing or two from her inspector.

“Detective Inspector Jack Robinson,” he introduced himself. “And you I believe are Dr Jane Smith? We have met, although we haven’t been officially introduced.”

‘Not yet we haven’t,’ thought the Doctor. ‘It’s going to be one of those, is it? Good thing I’m a screaming genius or time travel would get ever so confusing.’

“I was intending to ask you some questions relating to Miss Fisher’s disappearance, although I now get the impression,” and here the Inspector spread out a hand towards their highly implausible surroundings, “that none of your answers are likely to make it into an official police report.”

The Doctor exchanged a look with Phryne, who appeared to be resisting the urge to break into applause.

“Oh, he’s good. I can see why you like him.”

 

 

It took some time to unravel the story of the Sycorax and of Henry Fisher’s death. Jack’s initial reaction of outright disbelief was only dispelled after a moon landing and a brief and uneventful trip to 21st Century Brighton where they visited a fish and chip shop. The Doctor then parked the TARDIS in a geosynchronous orbit around the Earth and the three of them sat at the entrance, legs dangling over the side, eating food from disposable containers and enjoying the view. The Doctor amused her new companions with tales of her exploits (which Jack professed not to believe a word of), and Phryne entertained herself by alternately stealing bites of Jack’s saveloy whilst wearing an expression that was far too innocent, and feeding him bits of battered cod off of her fork. The Doctor smiled to herself as she watched the exchange; the TARDIS had been too empty for too long, and the sight of young love was balm to an old soul. Jack, for his part, responded to Phryne’s attentions by frowning in mock irritation and threatening her with the full force of the law.

“I think you might be a little out of your jurisdiction, Inspector,” she countered, gesturing down towards the planet below. Australia was not even visible from their current position.   

“That hasn’t stopped me recently. I followed your trail all the way to Darwin after you disappeared.” Jack smiled a self-depreciating little smile - he really should have expected her to find him before he caught up with her - and looked down in fascination at the planet spinning below them. “I admit we seem to be a bit further out now.”

“Is that where you met me?” asked the Doctor. She had a horrible feeling she was about to run into a nasty paradox, and those tended to make her grumpy. It felt somehow like time was cheating on her.

“No, but a number of witnesses saw a woman matching your description who also appeared to be tracking Miss Fisher across the continent.”

Phryne reclined regally, licking tomato sauce off her fingers and indicating with a smile that such attentions were both expected and, in her opinion, entirely deserved; a move which caused the Doctor and Jack to roll their eyes at each other as Jack continued his story.

“I met you behind the counter in a Post Office in Melbourne, where you very helpfully agreed to dispatch a telegram to a tiny village with no telegraph facilities; the name I got from another witness, who was somewhat less impressed with your work ethic. I take it Dr Smith is not your real name?”

“My _real_ name is the Doctor. Has been for longer than I care to remember, and by some accounts I’m billions of years old so that stretches back a way.”

“Billions, Doctor?”

“ _Billions_?” Phryne sounded surprised but Jack, who had reluctantly accepted time travel on the basis of the evidence (at least until he could think of a reliable way to test his own sanity) was utterly incredulous.

“Oh yes.” The Doctor met Jack’s eyes and let him glimpse the smallest fragment of the eternity in which she swam, the unfathomable depths of time unending. Her life thus far had her at least partially convinced that she was unable to die at all, that death was a final gift the universe bestowed on every living thing but her. It was a lonely destiny.

The Inspector had seen many things in his life; had seen men drown on dry land in air fogged with gas, had seen men – many of them his friends - cut open and bodies burnt beyond recognition. He had seen too a myriad of creeping, petty evils, the mediocre monsters who lurked in quiet brutality behind respectable doors. As he met the steady gaze of what he had thought of as a young woman, albeit a deeply mysterious one, he felt a seismic shift in his understanding, as if not just a rug but an entire tectonic plate had been pulled out from under him. All the little human crimes and ordinary horrors he had seen paled to nothing in the face of her expression. When she spoke, he heard the voice of a goddess from an ancient world and it was terrifying.

“I was old the first time I saw Babylon fall, child, and your world is still so young.”

The Doctor broke into an unaffected, impish grin and the darkness in her eyes vanished in an instant.

“Don’t worry though, Babylon was only my fault the third time and _I swear_ there were extenuating circumstances. Scouts Honour!”

Jack took refuge in a cynical eyebrow raise to cover how truly shaken he was.

“I somehow doubt you were ever a Boy Scout, Doctor.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Not on this planet.”

Jack attempted to exchange an exasperated look with Phryne, but the expression on her face troubled him even more than the darkness he had seen in the Doctor’s. She did not look afraid, she looked intrigued and excited. Of course she did. Like all things dangerous and best left alone, the Doctor was drawing Phryne to her like a moth to a flame. Did she know just how dangerous this woman might be? Would it make a difference if she did? Knowing Phryne probably not.

He glanced between the two women and his heart sank. He felt he could, at this point, have held his own against any man on Earth who tried to capture Phryne’s attention and at least been in with a fair chance. But the Doctor had fallen out of the sky in a magical box, offering unparalleled adventure and using Janey’s name. Even her face could have belonged to Phryne’s long dead sister, had she had the chance to grow up. He didn’t stand a chance. And whilst he found he couldn’t help liking the Doctor, somewhat against his better judgement, he did not trust her, especially not with Phryne’s safety. As there was nothing whatsoever he could do to about it, he did not voice his concerns, opting instead to watch and to wait.

“Perhaps you could use the benefit of your experience to explain this then, Doctor? Unless you can shed some light on it, Miss Fisher? Mac told me you were practically bedridden when it was taken.”

He pulled out the stack of Phryne’s correspondence and the photograph Dot had found at the Adventuress’ Club, handing the latter to Phryne so the two women could bring their heads together to look it over.

“Is that you arresting me, Jack?” He shot her a small, sideways smile which Phryne filed away as ‘promising’.

“Unlike last time you don’t appear to be trying to assault me. It would be too much to believe you’ve seen the error of your ways so I’ll just assume you’re biding your time, shall I?” She smirked back, edging towards him slightly across the tiled floor.

“Interesting,” the Doctor cut in. “That looks like me in the background there.” She rummaged through her pockets, which appeared to have filled up with a great many strange things since she and Phryne had chosen their outfits. To Jack’s silent confusion, both women collapsed into a fit of giggles when she pulled out a satsuma and handed it to him.

Finally, the Doctor appeared to locate what she was looking for - a brass monocle which shone for a second with a trace of green light. She held it up to her eye, moving the picture around as she tried to work out how to explain the complexities of temporal physics to two intelligent people who would nevertheless be mystified by a microchip. 

“Yes. Very interesting.” She looked up. “For the most part, time can be rewritten if you travel through it, but there are some events that just happen. If you try to stop them you either break the universe, or they find a way to happen anyway. This,” she pointed at the photograph “is a picture of a fixed point in time, and if that’s not the Phryne from 1920, then we have a mystery on our hands, because Phryne cannot travel back anywhere on her own time line.”

At Jack’s look of confusion, the Doctor dipped her finger in the leftover curry sauce from her meal (it was an off-putting yellow-brown and the other two had politely declined to sample it) and began sketching sticky shapes on the floor next to her. Phryne had not been able to absorb more from her previous conversation on this subject than that she would be unable to return home until six months after she left. Whilst she was not in the habit of admitting to being anything less than an expert on any subject, she perked up her ears in curiosity, and when the Doctor spoke it was Phryne she was addressing.

“Here’s your life up to the point you met the Sycorax.” She drew an arrow along the mosaic tiles of the TARDIS floor. “Then you get stuck in a loop of time.” She drew a circle at the end of the arrow. “But the machine creating the loop was being operated by…ever seen the damage a drunk driver can do on a crowded street?”

Jack frowned at the apparent non-sequitur but did not interrupt, Phryne however nodded. “You said it had damaged time?”

“Yes. And those same – for want of a better phrase – drunk drivers were operating a ship that could travel through time as well. Double trouble. Time around it started to become unstable.” She drew a wiggly line around the circle. “And when you were stuck in that loop without anything to protect you, that instability began to spread back down your timeline.” She drew a wiggly line down the length of the arrow she had drawn.

“On the upside, I turned up,” she drew a box next to the circle and grinned at her. “I shut down the machine.” The Doctor licked her finger and rubbed out the circle representing the time loop, causing Miss Fisher to wince slightly; you would think someone claiming to be billions of years old would have picked up some semblance of table manners, even if they were dining on the floor.

The Doctor drew a tiny plane (surprisingly well executed given the medium was ‘curry sauce on floor’) in the spot the circle had been and drew a larger circle around it with a line leading to the TARDIS. “I put some energy shielding around your plane, so when you came out of the loop six months from when you entered it…” she drew a cross a few inches away from the circle “…you were safe. But,” she was looking more serious now, “the exposure turned you into a kind of catalyst, if you cross your own timeline, or had exited the loop at the same time as you entered it, the results could have been…unpredictable.”

In fact, Phryne’s safety was the result of an entirely accidental six-month hop into the future, caused by the sudden shut down of the time loop. However, the Doctor didn’t think it was the best idea to let Phryne know just how close she had come to an uncertain fate; it always paid to let people think that things were a plan when they worked out in your favour. 

“In my experience ‘unpredictable’ and Miss Fisher tend to go hand in hand,” Jack observed with a sideways glance at the woman in question. “What exactly do you think would happen to her?”

“There are a lot of possibilities, none of them good.” The Doctor was addressing Jack now, on the hunch that Phryne’s personal safety was probably of greater concern to him than her. “She could die, or be deleted from history altogether, or time could stop, or crack open exposing the void between dimensions.”

“Well apparently not, at least according to the evidence.” Phryne waved the photograph at her.

“Unless the photograph was faked, as I initially assumed. Although admittedly that was before I travelled a century into the future to buy supper,” Jack countered with a wry smile.

“He’s right, Alice. The universe is big and infinitely weird; I can think of a dozen ways that photograph could be taken without you ever setting foot in 1920, and none of them would even rank in the top three oddest things to happen to you this week. Honestly, there’s not much we can do about it except wait to see how it plays out. I’m certainly not taking you there deliberately. The rest of the rabbit hole is still wide open though, if you still want to come along and see the universe?”

Jack interrupted before Phryne could answer - the Doctor’s tone made it infinitely clear that she did not expect her to refuse, even after reeling of a list of heart-stopping dangers in a voice so matter of fact she could have been talking about the weather. He was rather hoping to have a conversation with Phryne on that subject himself, and wanted do it without the Doctor listening.

“What about our correspondence, and the missing flight data from the Darwin airfield?”

“My instinct is that’s is just a pre-destination paradox. I’m going to go and play postman because you’ve already seen me do it.” Jack felt slightly irritated by this response, there were rules here to which he was not privy, and any hope of being guided by anything as mundane as common sense had long since vanished.

The Doctor did not appear to notice. “Anything else you can tell me? She asked. “It’s going to be a delicate operation to get us there, and unlike the photograph it won’t just happen if I leave it alone. None of these,” she indicated the little stack of letters Jack had pulled out of his pocket along with the photograph, “are fixed points. That means they require a bit more effort.”

“I think I may have heard the TARDIS.” Jack’s voice was hesitant. He had never told anyone except Phryne about the dream which had haunted him for months – and that was just a few lines at the bottom of a letter. He was certainly not keen to be pressed for further details, at least not by anyone who wasn’t Phryne.

He turned back to his partner, hoping she would read between the lines. “I thought I was dreaming at the time, but it’s a fairly distinctive noise.”

“Feeling in the mood for a full confession, Detective?” she asked fondly.

“Perhaps in a more private location?” He flicked his eyes awkwardly towards the Doctor, who was smearing curry sauce over the floor of the TARDIS with a handkerchief in a futile attempt to clean up after herself.

The Doctor, inwardly delighted that this incarnation had apparently mastered tact, sprang to her feet and skipped over to the console. The flick of a few switches caused the sauce doodle to be absorbed into the mosaic without a trace.

“Observation Lounge is down that corridor,” she gestured to one of curtained doors and along the wall, “fifth door on your right, past the library, take a left, and there’s a hidden panel behind the bookcase at the end of corridor. I’ll leave you to guess which book to pull out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have not had the pleasure of British chip shop curry sauce, it is a gloopy, light brown gravy with added curry powder, served slopped onto chip shop chips (which are deep fried hunks of pure potato, rather than processed fries or oven chips). It's one of those foods that is completely disgusting but you can't help eating it anyway, especially when drunk.


	12. Losing All Reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The detectives take their reunion to a more intimate setting, and Phryne solves a mystery from Jack's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I've fed them, and there are very definite rules about what happens next. This chapter gets a tad smutty, I think they deserve it after all they've been through.

The walk to the Observation Lounge took around 15 minutes, and Phryne held Jack’s arm as they strolled down the winding corridors of the TARDIS. After all the grief and fear - not to mention the world shattering confusion which had all but consumed her since her fateful encounter with the Sycorax - there was something very comforting in the familiar weight of his bicep under her fingers; she could almost believe this was just another case in far stranger surroundings.

Jack was quiet, caught between his joy at finally being with Phryne again and the lingering rational voice in his mind which kept insisting that none of this could possibly be real. His eyes were darting around the corridors, taking in the mismatched decorations which adorned the walls; he recognised vases and suits of armour, sculptures and occasional furniture from a myriad places and eras on Earth. They were jumbled haphazardly together with strange gadgets and pieces of machinery he couldn’t even begin to name, odd luminescent glass tubes and balls of hovering sparks; the treasure of centuries gathered from all the furthest corners of time and space.

Despite his misgivings, Jack couldn’t hide his look of delight when they poked their heads into the library. Spiralling towers of neatly shelved books surrounded by balconies reached all the way to a vaulted roof lost in the endless shadows above them. Further volumes were stacked in teetering piles on floors and tables arranged haphazardly on every level; it seemed to go on forever and quite possibly it did.

“It is rather impressive, isn’t it?” Phryne smiled fondly at him.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” He sounded awed.

“You stood on the moon today Jack.” She reminded him. Honestly, only Jack Robinson could, when presented with the prospect of the whole of time and space, get this excited about a library. Albeit an astounding one.

“And ruined a good pair of shoes.” He glanced down, frowning at the dust on his formerly neat brown Oxfords.

She raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him, tugging him away down to corridor to the promised secret bookcase and into the Observation Lounge. Phryne smiled as she spotted the battered copy of Alice in Wonderland which caused it to slide back.

This time both of them were rendered speechless.

The room was hemi-spherical - the richly carpeted floor was littered with huge piles of soft cushions and rugs, scattered like picnic blankets at irregular intervals. The ceiling, if it was a ceiling, showed what must have been the view from the outside of the TARDIS. To one side, the Earth rotated in darkness, the continents picked out by the myriad golden lights of human civilisation, like tiny constellations against the blue and black of sea and land. Across the rest, the whole of the heavens lay spread out, every star and band of the Milky Way clearer and brighter than either of them had ever seen it on Earth, even on the darkest night.

“Jack...” Phryne was mesmerised; she glanced up at him her eyes sparking in wonder, but to her consternation found that he looked troubled. Clearly, he had something on his mind.

Striding purposefully to the middle of the room, she plumped up a pile of cushions on a deep burgundy rug which perfectly matched the dress, still hidden under the creamy silk and lace of her jacket. Sitting down, she beckoned him to join her and was a little relieved when he did not hesitate, discarding his hat and propping himself up against the cushions. Phryne removed her cloche, throwing it in the direction of Jack’s fedora before slipping off her shoes. Taking up her own spot against the cushions, she angled herself into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm wrapped round her, his hand resting gently over her hip.

“Now tell me what is bothering you.” she demanded in a tone which brooked no argument.

He swallowed, afraid to put a voice to his fears in case doing so shattered this beautiful dream, lying in this wonderful and infinitely improbable place, with an equally wonderful and infinitely improbable Phryne Fisher in his arms. But even in dreams he could never hope to conceal anything from her for long.

“Phryne, this can’t be real.”

“You think this is a dream, Jack? Would you like me to pinch you?” She did so, quite hard and without waiting for a reply.

“Ouch!” He rubbed the back of his hand and glared at her.

“I don’t know what else to suggest.” She said matter-of-factly. “I know it’s all a bit…out of the ordinary, impossible even, but well, it does seem to be happening anyway. We might as well enjoy it.”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

She was so wonderfully unencumbered by his need for the world to make rational sense at times. He envied her that, her ability to simply be, finding joy in the moment, rather than needing to analyse and rationalise every experience. She was right though - reality, dream, or madness, whatever was happening was beyond his control.

“You’re going to stay with the Doctor, travel with her.”

It wasn’t a question. He knew her too well to need to ask. She squeezed her arm tight around his chest, closing her eyes and breathing in the warm scents of his pomade, the cheap tobacco and institutional floor polish of City South, and the light musk of his skin. 

“We’re in a time machine Jack, I’m probably already at home enjoying a hot bath as we speak.” She stroked a hand across his chest under his jacket. “And perhaps your excellent company?”

The flirtation was a deflection and he knew it. When he didn’t respond apart from a small smile and a kiss to her hair she sighed and abandoned the pretence.

“In a way, I rather wish we were dreaming.” Wordlessly he stroked her arm, hearing her breath hitch as she fought to keep her voice steady. “Then I could be back in Melbourne, or still en route to Darwin, before father…” she let out a small sob. “It was my fault, I never meant it to happen but it was my fault, and mother…I’ll never be able to tell her.”

She drew in a breath, trying to inject some of her normal levity into her tone but not really succeeding. “I do hope I can convince you this is happening Jack, because no-one else is ever going to believe me.”

“Phryne, you did an incredible, selfless thing for your father, no-one, not even you, could possibly have predicted _this_. I’m sure Mac told you the same when you spoke with her.”

She looked confused. “When I spoke with Mac?”   

“You telephoned City South to call me out here, you were speaking to her as I left?” He tilted his head down at her, drawing his eyebrows together in query.

Phryne looked utterly nonplussed for a moment before breaking into a broad grin. “Time travel, Jack. Seems like I make it back after all.”

Had she been there, the Doctor could have disabused the detectives of this comforting idea and reminded them that for the most part time could be rewritten. As it stood, the thought that they were living somehow in the space between two moments was oddly freeing, at least for Phryne, as if they had been granted a reprieve from the cares of the real, less fantastical world.

She propped herself up on her elbows and turned so she could look at Jack properly; leaning in to kiss him swiftly and softly, because she could, before reclining once again and fixing him with a stern look of which the Inspector himself would have been proud. When she spoke, it was in the matter of fact tone she often used when they discussed casework. 

“Now, tell me about this dream.”

He swallowed. He wanted to explain, to express something of the profundity of the experience. Of how in her absence he had clung so desperately to something he knew wasn’t real, because he couldn’t face the truth about what her disappearance might mean. Of how his world had seemed to tilt further and further away from its centre until nothing made sense anymore. He lowered his gaze, unable to look at her as he spoke.

“I knew it wasn’t real, but it felt like it was. If that can happen, how can I trust that I haven’t just gone mad?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t real.” She asked, trying to keep her voice level in the face of his anguish. “You said you thought you heard the TARDIS?”

“Well you were most definitely there, and the Doctor was fairly adamant that that wasn’t possible. Do you trust her?”

Phryne tilted her head on one side, weighing her answer and he was relieved that she seemed to be giving the question serious consideration. He was convinced that, whatever happened, she would be safer without placing implicit trust in her new friend.

“I’m not sure; she saved my life Jack, and she helped me get what justice I could for father. But she’s not always entirely truthful. I get the impression she often gives the easy answer rather than the honest one.”

Part of her was appalled at herself for dragging him into this situation. She had been so certain that he would want to share in this adventure with her, that he would see the beauty of creation and be so overwhelmed even Shakespeare would desert him. But it had been selfish too, she knew that. He was the single pillar who stood tall when the world threatened to overwhelm her; when Jane had gone missing, Murdoch Foyle, Rene, dealing with her father. It was Jack she had turned to, and she had come to rely on his steadfast, unflappable presence. Having finally admitted this to herself, she was not about to give up on him.      

Phryne reached out and cupped his face in her hand. “As to you being mad Jack, I’m not sure what I can say to reassure you, if you are convinced this is all some kind of an hallucination. But I think you might entertain the possibility that the universe is simply stranger and more wonderful than you thought it was.”

Jack closed his eyes at her touch. He felt as if his reason had been fighting a losing battle against his senses for far longer than this strange night of miracles and madness. He wanted so badly for this to be real, for her to be here, safe and unharmed in his arms. He reached up and laid his hand over hers, twining their fingers and kissing her palm, her wrist. When he opened his eyes, they were full of a wild and desperate longing; he drew her to him and kissed her. Phryne had felt the passion in him before now but this was different, this was hunger.

She was not about to discourage him. She ran her hands across Jack’s chest, dislodging his coat and suit jacket in one move, and met his lips forcefully. She wanted to anchor him to her, to the undeniable reality of her lips on his, of his hands touching her through thin layers of silk and satin. His nimble fingers located the tiny buttons hidden under the lace overlay of her jacket and pushed it from her shoulders, before returning to ravage her neck as she raked her fingers through his hair. His hands slipped under her skirt, running up her stockings, and she moaned into his mouth as he tore them from her.

He drew back as his fingers travelled further up her thigh, his eyes met hers in search of permission as he traced the lacy hem of her lingerie. He paused to admire the sight she made; the scarlet paint on her toenails, her skin pale against the rumpled burgundy silk of her gown. His hands stilled abruptly as he found himself caught suddenly in a moment of perfect déjà vu; he had seen her like this before. They had stumbled through his house, trailing laughter and kisses, barely making it to his bed on that wild night that never was and she had looked _exactly_ like this. Phryne felt his hesitation, saw the confusion on his face.

“Jack, Jack what’s wrong?”

His expression was wistful as he ran his fingers gently over the soft silk. “You were wearing this the first time I had this dream. Maybe I’m doomed to repeat it over and over until I find you.”

To his surprise, she did not look upset or concerned at his words. In fact, her face broke into the deeply satisfied expression of a Phryne who had just solved a particularly difficult mystery.

“It wasn’t a dream, Jack. It wasn’t a dream, and neither is this.”

He frowned at her quizzically, his eyes searching her face again, now looking for answers. She shook her head, still smiling a maddening little smile and rolled him onto his back, setting to work on the buttons of his waistcoat.

“Trust me, it will keep,” she lowered her voice and leant in so her lips brushed against the shell of his ear, “and I have much more immediate plans for you, Inspector.”

Phryne pulled Jack’s tie loose with a flourish and sent it snaking off into the semi-darkness of the room, bending close to dart her tongue into the tempting little hollow at the base of his throat. At that point Jack decided that all his pressing existential questions could wait; she was after all, making a very persuasive argument.

He pulled her down on top of him, crushing the silk of her dress in his eagerness to remove it, as she wrestled with the buttons of his shirt in an effort to get closer to him. He tasted divine, better than she had imagined, and Phryne had imagined this moment many, many times. Somehow, having him here, willing and wanting in her arms after so long, and after so many missteps and mistakes, seemed almost more surreal than the strange path she had travelled to get here. She wanted him heart, body, and soul, and she was no longer thinking coherently enough for that to frighten her.

When he rose to pull off his shirt and singlet, she sat back on her heels and cast her camisole into the darkness to join his lost tie amongst the scattered cushions. Jack growled and rolled them over, dropping desperate kisses across her neck before moving down to grasp the point of her nipple between his lips, flicking it with his tongue to make her gasp. Everywhere he touched her blazed white hot with pleasure, and her hands and lips were frantically exploring every inch of skin she could reach. She slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his trousers, gripping the smooth skin and hard muscle of his thighs and backside and grinding herself against his hard length. He was peppering kisses and moaning into her mouth and neck, an inarticulate nonsense of love and want, and her name, over and over. She had heard it so rarely from him before, every time it fell from his lips she felt it like a caress against her skin.

She unbuttoned his trousers, pushing them down so he could kick them away along with his underwear. He was a glorious sight - flushed with desire, desperate, beautiful, and all for her. She reached out to take him in her hand, smirking in satisfaction as her steady strokes drew curses she had never heard him use before.

“Jack Robinson, I never knew you had such a filthy mouth.”

The smile he gave her told her quite plainly hat he had taken this as a challenge. He gentled their pace, his hands and lips soft but insistent across her breasts, her belly, then with agonising slowness he began kissing the inside of her thighs, trailing a series of tender bites across her soft flesh, teeth and tongue moving ever closer to the wet silk between her legs. He found the buttons at the side of her knickers, sliding up to kiss the exposed skin at the juncture of her thighs as he peeled them off her.

_“Fuck!”_

The spark of pleasure when he finally flicked the hard point of his tongue across her clit was like the snap of a static shock. It shot through her from head to toe, making the muscles of her thighs clench around his head. She could feel him smile in satisfaction as he continued to work her with his tongue until she was oblivious to everything but his mouth and the slow, even pressure of his fingers stroking into her core. She came apart chanting his name, her vision blurring, the light of galaxies which lit the room fragmenting into glittering shards.

When she could focus again, Jack was lying next to her, looking deeply pleased with himself. He reached out to stroke the hair from her face. When he kissed her, she could taste herself, rich and salty on his tongue.

“Alright?” he asked.

“Wonderful.”  

She pulled him to her, kissing him deeply, and with every intention of rolling him onto his back and ravishing him so thoroughly he forgot his own name. This excellent plan was rudely interrupted by an extremely irritating realisation.

“Damnit!”

“What’s wrong?” he drew back with a look of concern.

“No family planning. I left my bag back there.” She gestured vaguely towards the corridor leading to the console room.

Jack’s look of exasperation was so familiar, and so comical, Phryne actually laughed. She glanced pointedly down his body.

“Well, as you don’t appear to be in a fit state to retrieve it for me, perhaps I should return the favour?”

This idea appeared to cheer him up considerably.

“I can’t say I’d argue,” he appeared to consider this statement for a second. “It never does me any good.”

“You’re learning, Inspector,” she smirked at him, rolled him onto his back, and proceeded to ravish him so thoroughly he forgot his own name.          

 

The Doctor was worried. She had glossed over the idea of a predestination paradox fairly flippantly in front of her new friends, but in fact, the idea of a niggling little run of temporal inconsistencies in Phryne’s already damaged timeline was not one she liked at all. Dangerous as it would be to pilot the TARDIS in that environment, the danger of leaving those paradoxes unresolved was even greater, especially for Phryne. She was protected from the damaged portion of her history by only the smallest buffer, six months. It was barely a breath. Each of those anomalous moments the detectives had discovered could potentially spread, infecting her present. The Doctor did not really know what would happen to Phryne if the cracks in her past caught up with her, but she was fairly sure it would not be good.

She was carefully plotting a course to follow the letters and telegrams from Melbourne to Darwin and had just entered the co-ordinates for Darwin Airfield when the two detectives returned to the console room, Phryne practically pulling Jack along by the arm. They both looked rather rumpled and not a little pleased with themselves. Phryne appeared to have dispensed with her shoes and stockings, and Jack had somehow lost his tie.

“Doctor,” Phryne began in the confident voice of a woman usually capable of convincing any audience that she was an expert on any subject, regardless of how little she actually knew about it. “The Temporal Oscillator, how does it work?”

The Doctor had been around long enough to recognise trouble when it marched in on bare feet and painted toenails, wearing an expression of unassailable determination, but she was curious to see where this was leading.

“It creates a bubble of artificial time which is insulated from the world around it. Anything trapped inside will keep reusing that time over and over again until the bubble is collapsed from the outside. Why?”’

“You said I couldn’t go back into the past. But we know I did because Jack saw me there, the night this,” she grabbed the sheet of hotel addresses from the stack of evidence the Inspector had brought with him, “was left in his house.”

“You’re sure?” The Doctor addressed Jack, fixing him with her slightly unsettling gaze; she was faintly impressed when he met it without blinking.

“I thought it was impossible, so I assumed it was a dream. I suppose I should have learned by now not to assume anything is impossible around Miss Fisher.”

“Good answer, detective.” Phryne nodded at him appreciatively. Turning back to the Doctor she continued “He recognised the gown I found in your wardrobe. There’s no other way he could have seen it before.”

The Doctor considered this. “You want to use the Oscillator to shield yourself, keeping you from damaging yourself and time, in order to meet Jack in the past for what I am assuming is a booty call?”

Actually, in terms of fixing the paradox, the idea was rather brilliant and the Doctor was a little disappointed not to have come up with it herself. The detectives were looking at her in confusion.

“A what?” asked Jack, although he could have made a fair guess.

“Netflix and chill?” She hazarded.

When this got nothing but blank faces, the Doctor mentally readjusted her lexicon of idioms by a few decades.

“A romantic liaison?”

Jack had the grace to look a little embarrassed, but Phryne Fisher had never known shame in her life and was unlikely to make its acquaintance now.

“Naturally. Does that matter?”

“As a plan, it’s all kinds of risky and every flavour of dangerous.” The Doctor grinned. “I love it. Let’s get going.”

Jack held up a hand. “Wait, I thought you said that temporal osowhatsit was dangerous. Wasn’t that what started all this trouble in the first place?”

The Doctor flashed him her supernova smile.

“Yes, but I’m an unstoppable space genius, and unlike the Sycorax I know what I’m doing!”

The TARDIS console beeped in a way the Doctor was sure was meant to be sarcastic, causing her to glare at it.               

In fact, for a supposedly dangerous mission the next stage of their adventure was more…fiddly than thrilling. Phryne copied out the addresses of her hotels on a new sheet of paper as Jack read them out to her from the page he had brought with him; when compared afterwards, every whorl and flourish of her handwriting matched perfectly.

Then the Doctor made several trips to picked up and deliver Jack and Phryne’s letters and telegrams, finally dropping the folder containing Phryne’s flight plan from Darwin to Batavia unceremoniously down the back of a filing cabinet, before returning to the TARDIS to co-ordinate the final, and most difficult, part of the plan.

Phryne stood between the console and the outer doors, her jaw set firmly against the anxiety she felt at once again entering the Temporal Oscillator. Her last experience with the technology was not one she would care to repeat. She had no intention of showing it though. Jack was having a hard-enough time coping with the situation already and she didn’t want him to worry.

“How do I look, Jack? Just as you remember?”

“Not quite.”

Turning to the hat stand the Doctor had caused to rise from the floor, Jack carefully removed the battered swallow badge from Phryne's satin jacket and pinned it to her dress. His expression was one of mingled exasperation, fondness, and amusement. It was amazing his face had room.

“When I said I feared another man would sweep you away from me…”

Phryne bobbed her head to one side with a small smile, acknowledging the overwhelming ridiculousness of the situation.

“You never thought it would be you?”

He choked out a small laugh and kissed her gently, moving towards the console where the Doctor stood. She was pressing buttons and whispering words of encouragement to the TARDIS, which wasn’t especially keen on precision flying in a distorted timeline, and was not at all enamoured with the idea of adding extra temporal technology to that volatile mix.

“Ready?” She asked.

Phryne nodded, owning her fear and embracing it like a long-lost friend. After all, it was Jack in there and recent events – somewhat curtailed due to a lack of family planning, which was now taken care of – suggested this was an adventure she was going to enjoy. She snapped open her mirror and reapplied her lipstick with the air of a knight donning armour before battle.

The golden sphere expanded around Phryne; she was still visible through the sparkling surface but her movements were a stop motion staccato, like a series of still images joined together. The Doctor opened the doors with a simple middle C and continued to fuss with buttons and levers – and a short arpeggio – as Phryne, surrounded by the glittering orb of the Oscillator, walked out of the doors and straight into Jack’s living room.

They took off again moments later, landing in his garden to wait. At a series of complicated commands from the Doctor, the Oscillator expanded to encompass the entire house, the only external sign a very faint golden tinge to the windows, easily dismissed as a trick of the light.

The silence in the control room stretched out until it became excruciatingly awkward. It was the Doctor who broke it.

“Does it feel a bit like the universe has spent the last six months giving you busy work?”

“The universe, Doctor, or you?” He had deep suspicions on this point.

The Doctor shrugged. “Six of one…she was worried you would fret if you didn’t have something to keep you busy.”

“Kind of you to accommodate me. You couldn’t have just let me know what was going on?”

“You would have believed any of it? You’re still not entirely convinced now and you’re standing right here.”

Jack grunted and flicked the corners of his mouth down momentarily in reluctant acceptance of her point.

“Go with science, Jack,” she advised him. “Change your understanding based on your observations, all other roads lead to madness.”

He nodded and did not voice his concern that ‘madness’ was a destination at which he had already arrived.

The Doctor scrutinised him for a long moment. “Well, you better work it out in your head somehow now that you’re joining us.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I am?”

She gave him a very patronising look which did not make him feel especially keen to take any of her advice, however sensible. “Please. You’d follow her anywhere. By the way, why Patagonia?”

“Patagonia, Doctor?” he replied, with a feigned ignorance which would probably have convinced someone without thousands of years of experience in judging whether or not humans were avoiding a question.

“Your telegram – _Patagonia sounds inspiring_ – why Patagonia? We can go if you like, any point in history.”

Jack was rather relieved to realise that the Doctor hadn’t actually read the letter that Phryne had sent him. He had, with considerable reluctance, allowed Mac to read the first half, in case there were any clues he had missed, but the latter, more explicit portion he had kept to himself. It was something private between him and Phryne, and he was not keen on sharing it.

“A metaphor for adventure,” he explained tersely.

“Well, in that case, the universe is your mollusc of choice. Think about it.”

“I will, Doctor.”

He did, staring blankly at the white doors through which Phryne had exited. The Doctor might see this as just another paradox to be resolved, something which she had explained vaguely was necessary for the sake of Phryne’s safety; Jack, however knew full well that no matter what the risk, Phryne would be out there now, facing unknown dangers, and fear she would never admit to feeling, just to let him know she loved him, that she was safe and that she was coming home. It was a message his heart had heard, all those months ago, even if his head had not been ready to believe his senses, and he felt awed and humbled by it, now he fully understood what that night had meant for both of them.  

His reverie was interrupted abruptly, when the Doctor realised, with an impressive selection of untranslatable Galifrayen curses, that Phryne had not taken the page of addresses with her.

“You’ll have to play postman this time. I’m guessing you have keys to your own house, just sneak in once she’s left and try not to meet yourself, it only ever causes trouble,” the Doctor advised him.

Which was how Jack came to be standing outside of his house, six months into his own past, when his most pressing problem had been wondering how long it would take Phryne to return from London and what might happen between them when she did. He unlocked his front door to let Phryne out, still surrounded by the glittering golden orb of the Temporal Oscillator, he thought she might have waved at him but the distortion of the energy field surrounding her made it difficult to tell. Jack entered the house as quietly as he could, slipping off his shoes to move in silence down the hall, avoiding all of the floorboards that squeaked underfoot. He snuck into the dark of his living room and placed the single sheet of paper in the chair Phryne had recently vacated, ready for him to discover the next morning.

Moving softly back towards the door, he stubbed his toe against something hard on the hallway floor and froze, suppressing a curse at the sudden pain in his foot. The house was still quiet; no sound came from the bedroom, so presumably he had not woken himself up.

Bending down, he discovered the source of his discomfort. It was the cosh he had extracted from his bedside cabinet, thinking there was an intruder in his house. He had discarded it in the hallway and never returned it to its drawer, although it had been there the following morning. Picking it up, he slipped into his bedroom, placing it back into the drawer by the side of his bed.

Of all of the strange things which had happened to him that day, or indeed for the whole of the period since Phryne’s disappearance, nothing compared to the sight of his own body, wrapped in sleep. He looked down at himself, lying naked in contented slumber, a look of utter peace and contentment on his face. He didn’t think he had ever worn that expression whilst awake.

It was in that instant that he chose madness. He might be adrift without a map or compass in this H. G. Wellsian nightmare of a new world, but this world was where Phryne Fisher now resided, and he had already promised himself a mad, impossible adventure once and had been unable to follow through. This time, he would see what the universe had to offer.

Returning to the TARDIS, he knocked softly and was admitted to the console room by the Doctor. Phryne was already free from the golden sphere and wearing a radiant smile he had last seen on an airstrip as she ran towards her plane.

“Come with us, Jack.”

She reached out to him, taking both of his hands in hers.

“I’m all yours, Miss Fisher,” he gave her a fond, lopsided smile, “lead the way to Patagonia.”

“Oh, we can to better than that, Jack, there are whole worlds out there.”

“She’s not wrong,” interjected the Doctor, pulling on a large lever which caused the lights in the bell jar atop the console to flicker and dance. “And it’s about time we went and saved some.”

The TARDIS dematerialised from the garden of Jack’s modest home in the spring of 1929; where and when they were heading, even the Doctor was not entirely sure. That’s what made it an adventure.


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little taste of the return home.

Phryne placed the telephone receiver back in its hatch and closed it, stroking one hand down the blue doors of the TARDIS in a gesture of farewell. She turned to Jack, who was standing behind her holding the bag of miscellaneous items she had retrieved from the plane crash. It felt like years ago. In all honesty, neither of them were exactly sure how long they had been away.

“I spoke to Mac. She agreed to pass on the news of my safe return. I think she assumed I might need time to ravish you in the hangar as soon as you arrive to collect me, Inspector.” A small, flickering smile played around her mouth, but there was a hint of sadness underneath her customary flirtation that she couldn’t quite hide. Not from him anyway. He had the grace to ignore it.

“I can think of worse ways to pass the time whilst we wait for me to get here.”

Dropping her bag, he reached out and pulled her towards him, one hand in her hair, just as he had all those months ago, before the Doctor; before the magic and the monsters and the brave new worlds of unbelievable things which, if nothing else, had taught them that the universe held far greater terrors in it than each other.

With a wheezing rasp of engines, the TARDIS began to dematerialise; the wild gust of wind unleashed by its departure whipped the edges of their coats and blew Phryne’s hair about her head. They broke apart and stood, Phryne’s head in the crook of Jack’s shoulder, and watched it go. Once they were alone in the otherwise empty airfield, they paused for a moment, looking up at stars which somehow seemed smaller than they had before, like a place well known in childhood revisited with adult eyes. Even though the vastness of that great expanse, and the secrets it held, were things they could now attest to from personal experience.

Phryne shivered. “Come along Jack. Let’s get out of the wind.”

They walked towards the hangar where Phryne picked the padlock on the door (answering a question Jack had long forgotten he had once asked) and made themselves comfortable in a small office room towards the back of the building. They did indeed find a number of interesting ways to occupy their time, which categorically did not include any discussion of why they were here, back in Melbourne and returning to their lives once more.

At the sound of a car, Phryne stood up to listen, accidentally knocking over a chair as her foot caught against it in the dark. Jack pulled her down and placed a finger on her lips; she bit it playfully, but hushed. They could hear Jack’s voice echoing from the entrance to the hangar.

“Hello? Miss Fisher?”

They crouched, still and silent in their hiding place, as the other Jack, still standing by the entrance, tensed, listening.

“Phryne?” he called again. 

The familiar sound of the TARDIS broke through the quiet and the hidden detectives crouched low and still, eavesdropping on their own reunion muffled through the doors of the office. It wasn’t until they heard the Doctor’s ship dematerialise that they emerged and headed out towards the waiting motorcar, still parked outside where the Inspector had left it.

“I’ll drive if you like?” Phryne offered, knowing it would not be accepted.

“I believe you have commandeered enough police vehicles for the foreseeable future, Miss Fisher,” he responded, opening the passenger door pointedly and helping her to her seat before walking around to sit behind the wheel.

“You’re one to talk Inspector. And the TARDIS is _not_ a police vehicle.”

“Well, given it was stolen property in the first place, I’m sure the Doctor won’t hold it against us indefinitely.”

He put a reassuring hand on her knee and she threaded her fingers through his, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Will we ever see her again, do you think?”

“Perhaps,” he replied, “if we need her. I don’t think she makes social calls.”

“I’m not sure whether to hope for that or not,” Phryne admitted quietly, before adopting a brisk, practical tone. “But for now, we have more pressing matters to worry about.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the apparently imminent arrival of my mother. Believe me Jack, you will be begging for an invasion of Daleks before the month is out.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

He started the car and began the drive towards Wardlow, back to their old lives, which, whilst they might be a touch more earthbound than the ones they had been living with the Doctor, would never be short of adventure. After all, as the Doctor once said, Phryne Fisher Lady Detective, would always be drawn inexorably towards any trouble the universe had to offer, and if she couldn’t find any she could usually be relied upon to start some herself, just to keep things interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it for this story. So many thanks for everyone who has been following it and who has left comments and kudos. It means so much to me that you seem to be enjoying the crazy idea I had to mix up these two worlds.
> 
> As I've mentioned in a few comments this is the first part of a longer series of fics - I hope I've raised a few questions you might want answers to in this first instalment. I also have plans for a drabble/one shot collection set in the same universe, the first part of which is my trope fic for this month and should be up this week after I've edited it.
> 
> The next story in this series Is about 11,000 words written and is called The Fountain of Youth. It won't answer any of the mysteries I've set up in Patagonia, but it will have murder, conspiracy, smut, fluff, a space hotel and Jack *cough* I mean everyone, is wearing a towel. Except when they're not.
> 
> I hope you all decide to come back and find out what happens next.


End file.
